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A MARRIED PRIEST 

BY 
ALBERT HOUTIN 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 
BY 

JOHN RICHARD SLATTERY 



BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1910 






Copyright, 1910 
Sherman, French &* Company 



gGU25674£ 



NOTE 

In its original French, this little book has 
reached several editions. Its appearance led to a 
great deal of discussion, in which some journals 
of Paris, e. g., he Matin, he Steele, V Action, 
took part, as also did the Catholic press, ha 
Croix, UUnivers. The legal heir of Cardinal 
Perraud served warning upon and threatened suit 
against Mons. Houtin, the author, but failed to 
carry out his threat. A couple of bishops, the 
Rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris and some 
priests defended Charles Perraud by denying the 
marriage. The latter's own religious brethren 
— the Oratory of Paris — published in book 
form a reply which covered also the cases of Per- 
reyve and Gratry. [See Chapters I and II of 
this work.] Its many authors refused to put 
their names to it — an anon3 7 mous work in defense 
of a great church discipline — celibacy. 

Mons. Houtin's book, therefore, narrates the 
unique status of a celebrated French priest who 
entered into wedlock as best he could and yet held 
on to his official standing. By canon law and 
French law under the Concordat, the union of 
the Abbe Charles Perraud and Mme. Duval was 
no marriage. In their own eyes it was wedlock. 
Again, in every respect Charles Perraud was an 
exemplary priest, charitable, disinterested, and 
3 



4 NOTE 

wholly devoted to the incurable little waifs of 
Paris. He was a man of profoundly religious in- 
stincts and thoroughly good life. 

The obligation of celibacy was created by 
Gregory VII — Hildebrand — but only for the 
Latin church. In the Greek church, the clergy 
are married, except the monks, who are celibates 
not because of the priesthood but by reason of 
their vows. The law of Gregory VII is to-day 
in force but now with greater effect than in his 
own time. For up to the Council of Trent, a 
priest could not lawfully marry, but since that 
event his marriage is not only unlawful but also 
invalid, — a status, moreover, holding in the civil 
law of all countries which have Concordats with 
Rome. 

Many efforts have been made to get rid of 
celibacy. Gratry, who figures largely in the 
opening chapter of this life, sent a memorial for 
its abolition to the Vatican Council. It is said 
that a copy of this petition is in the archives of 
the Oratory of Paris, while Charles Perraud re- 
peatedly asked his brother — Cardinal Perraud 
— to secure from Rome the abolition of celibacy 
in his own case. The Cardinal promised, — and 
voila tout. In the closing chapter, we have a 
footnote, in which Pere Hyacinthe Loyson de- 
clares that Leo XIII offered to dispense himself 
and legalize his marriage upon condition that he 
would affiliate to some oriental Rite. When Car- 
dinal Lavigerie started schools for training na- 



NOTE 5 

tive Africans to the priesthood, he petitioned 
Rome to exempt them from celibacy ; but in vain. 
In La Revue dw clerge francais (Oct. 190£) 
Mgr. Le Roy, a bishop and Superior General of 
the Holy Ghost Fathers, declared that Protestant 
missionaries were more successful in Africa than 
Catholic and alleged two reasons chiefly. The 
first was the better training and higher culture 
of the Protestants and the second was that they 
were married men. In their homes they enjoyed 
an ease and a comfort and a help wholly lacking 
to the Catholic missionaries, much to their loneli- 
ness and failure. When in Rome in 1899, a 
prelate, now a bishop, both well informed and 
trustworthy, assured us that the South American 
bishops, when there assembled a year or so be- 
fore, asked Rome to dispense their clergy from 
celibacy. According to our informant, this fa- 
vor was conceded on the sole condition that if 
either the priest or his concubine was in danger 
of death, the pair might be married lawfully and 
validly. Of course if the sick party recovered 
the marriage would stand. For no matter what 
power the church may claim to enact laws and 
discipline against natural leanings she has never, 
so far as we know, held to the right or power to 
override natural laws. And marriage, according 
to her theologians, is one such law. She regu- 
lates, prevents, annuls marriages; but the bond 
itself is sacred in her eyes and she labors to find 
reasons for her rules and annulments outside of 



6 NOTE 

and beyond wedlock. Whether this reasoning be 
sound or not, the South American concession is 
the entering wedge. This dispensation, however, 
is not recorded in the published acts and decrees 
of the Latin- American Council. 

The canonical status of a priest covers not his 
private life; should a priest choose to have tme 
amie, that is a matter of conscience, provided the 
relationship is not notorious and scandalous. In 
this last case only will a prudent and experienced 
bishop interfere. But should a priest marry, he 
incurs all manner of penalties. Charles Perraud, 
however, suffered no public penalties ; in fact, his 
brother, Cardinal Perraud, named him a Canon 
of Autun, of which diocese he was bishop, — and 
this when married. 

Now the onus of celibacy is assumed at the sub- 
diaconate, the lowest of the greater orders. 
Lined up before the consecrating bishop, the 
youths about to be ordained sub-deacons hear 
from his lips an address in which occur the fol- 
lowing tragic declarations: 

" If up to now you have been careless, hereafter be 

vigilant. 
If up to now drunkards, hereafter be sober. 
If up to now immoral, hereafter be chaste." 1 

i Si usque nunc somnolenti, amodo vigiles. Si usque 
nunc ebriosi, amodo sobrii. Si usque nunc inhonesti, 
amodo casti. (" De ordinatione Subdiaconi, Pontificale 
Romanum.") 



NOTE 7 

Such are the words spoken by a celibate bishop 
to young men, who are as a rule well meaning, 
sober, and pure. In our day those expressions 
are archaic, but they speak louder than volumes 
of writings the opinion which the church had of 
her own newly ordained in the days of yore, when 
the liturgy was composed. They sound insolent, 
but no one, bishop, priest, deacon, or sub-deaco:i, 
pays any attention to that parrot-like utterance. 

The Italian journal Battaglie D'Oggi has had 
for some months a referendum on the question of 
celibacy. Its correspondents write from all quar- 
ters of the Peninsula. Their views are twofold 
chiefly, — abolition of celibacy, or to leave it 
a question of personal preference. This jour- 
nal is Catholic, even if liberal, and staunchly up- 
holds the pretensions of Rome. This unusual 
discussion proves that celibacy is not as yet a dead 
issue. 

Hereafter celibacy will be a question — a 
burning question for Rome. And nothing will 
force it more quickly than the emancipation of 
womankind. Celibacy assumes that woman is not 
fit to mate with the priest. Unhappily for her- 
self, woman has done most to uphold the status. 
She is the most conservative element in life. The 
fickleness of women is a familiar claim, but in 
Church and State it is the women who have been 
the conservative force. Had women in the days 
of Gregory VII the position they enjoy to-day, 
there would never have been question of celibacy. 



8 NOTE 

Of old, she was the semen wmrmndum. The ser- 
pent coaxed her to eat the apple. And coupled 
with this legend was the other of the virginal 
birth of Jesus. To-day, however, the higher 
criticism, or better, the science of historical evi- 
dence, has proven that in Nazareth Joseph, Mary, 
and Jesus were the same kind of family as those 
of the other inhabitants. 

Now, when women are coming into their own, 
celibacy will find its pit-fall. In bygone Chris- 
tian ages womankind was nM, politically, civilly, 
economically. To-day womankind can conduct 
business, own and inherit property, make wills, 
— in a word, play and act the citizen, save in re- 
gard to the ballot. Once suffrage is won — and 
won it shall be — the church will shelve her cel- 
ibacy. In that day her canonists will find as 
many and as sound reasons in favor of priestly 
marriages as heretofore they had defended in be- 
half of celibacy. It is the same in canon law as 
in theology. When a law is outlived and out- 
worn, to wheel around becomes an easy change. 

The Translator. 



PREFACE 

Mons. Hyacinthe Loyson entrusted to me the 
documents which he had relating to the great re- 
ligious crisis that began with the pontificate of 
Pius IX, with full permission to make such use 
of them as I deemed well of. 

Those here published seem to me to offer a 
special interest. They concern one of the most 
curious figures of the French clergy, and at the 
same time affect one of the gravest rules of ec- 
clesiastical discipline. Charles Perraud's conduct 
in regard to this regulation may be criticised ; but 
it was joined for many years to a great piety. 
In publishing this fact, I fancy that I am not 
far from his mind. He stood up bravely against 
the falsification of Church history, as frequent 
among contemporary biographies as in the ha- 
giography of the past. Specially did he blame 
Pere Gratry, his venerated master, for having 
written the life of their mutual friend, the Abbe 
Perreyve, and there insisting on the latter's en- 
thusiastic devotion to clerical celibacy, when he 
accepted its yoke while he passed over in silence 
the love, full of sorrow, which was the great trial 
of his last years. 

My effort, however, is only a study of history 
an I religious psychology. It brings to light 
simply a fact, interesting in itself and interest- 
9 



10 PREFACE 

ing also because it is much more common than 
many wish to believe and very different from that 
which many others fancy. Granting even that 
discussions come out of this little work, no prac- 
tical consequence can be drawn therefrom. Thh 
fact, too, makes my mind easy. It is under- 
stood, therefore, that I publish these documents 
solely to narrate and not to enter upon discussion 
with any one, or to raise a general question. 

The Author. 
Paris, France. 



A MARRIED PRIEST 

i 

VOCATION 

1831-1870 

Charles Alexis Perraud was born January 13th, 
1831, at Bayonne, where his father was then in 
garrison. Captain Perraud, who had started a 
simple soldier at Waterloo, came originally from 
French-Comte. Madame Perraud was the daugh- 
ter of the Chief Judge of a Chamber of the 
Royal Court, now known as the Court of Appeals 
at Bourges. 1 

He passed his boyhood first at Versailles, after- 
wards at Paris, whither his role as officer had led 
his father. At the catechism classes of Saint 
Sulpice, where he made his first communion, and 
at the Royal College, now Lycee, of St. Louis, 
where he was a pupil, he had schoolmates who be- 
came life-long friends, — the Abbe Eugene Ber- 
nard, who died cure of Saint-Jacques du Haut- 
Pas and the Abbe Henry Perreyve, who died a 
professor of the Sorbonne. His dearest friend, 
however, was his brother, Adolphe-Louis, older 

i L'abbe Charles Perraud, par Augustin Largent, pretre 
de TOratoire (Paris, Chapelliez, 1895, in-12, 110 p.). 

11 



12 A MARRIED PRIEST 

by three years. Rarely were two brothers so de- 
voted to each other, but in their mutual love the 
tender-hearted Charles was ever giving in. 

After finishing humanities, Charles studied law 
along with Perreyve. Legal science offered no 
attraction to them. Perreyve, on the very day 
of his first communion, had determined to conse- 
crate himself to God. When nineteen years of 
age, Charles Perraud, also, fancied that he had 
heard the call from on high and made up his 
mind to become a priest. Somewhat later, when 
his brother resolved to enter a congregation, he 
thought that in it also should he enter upon the 
sacred ministry. The parents, however, of the 
two youths wished to try their juvenile vocations 
and refused to permit them to carry out at once 
their plan. Only on November 1st, 1853, was 
Charles allowed to go and join his brother at the 
re-opened Oratory, rue du Regard. At the same 
time Perreyve joined along with him. 

Following his ordination, November 19th, 
1857, his superiors assigned Charles Perraud to 
preaching, for which he seemed gifted. Between 
1860 and 1870 he preached a great deal both in 
the Provinces, e. g., at La Rochelle, Orleans, 
Grenoble, Rheims, Lyons, and elsewhere, even at 
Paris. In spite of his success, his happiness in 
the religious life did not last long. He had the 
misfortune to be separated from Perreyve, whose 
frail constitution was not able to stand the rule 
of the Oratory, although in no wise austere. 



VOCATION 13 

Henry left, went to Rome to finish his studies and 
became one of the Clergy of Paris. He advanced 
rapidly, was named second chaplain of the Col- 
lege of St. Louis, assistant at the Church of St. 
Thomas Aquinas, and lastly Professor of Church 
History at the Sorbonne. Work and a pure, 
deep love wore out his frail body. He was in 
love with the daughter of a friend, a fatherless 
orphan, who had grown up before his eyes into 
a charming young lady. In despair he repeated : 
" There is then no country in the world where a 
Catholic priest in marrying can remain such." 
Upon his death-bed he demanded urgently to see 
the dear one who had stirred up his passion. Her 
mother, who knew the secret of the Abbe's long- 
ings, asked her confessor if she might bring her 
daughter for a visit. The confessor in a deter- 
mined way forbade it and the agony of Perreyve 
in consequence became more desolate. He gave 
up the ghost June 26, 1865, aged 34 years. 

The leading writer of the Oratory, Pere Gra- 
try, set to work at once to narrate this touch- 
ing career. 1 He pictured him, as an ideal priest 
and enlarged upon the way in which Perreyve 
dwelt upon the happiness of " virginal souls." 
But every vestige of the love affair was left out. 
Much as he loved Gratry, Charles Perraud could 
not keep from blaming this omission. " He has 
shown," said he, " Perreyve happy in his celibacy. 

i Henry Perreyve (Paris, Douniol, 1866. in-80). 



U A MARRIED PRIEST 

He deceives his readers, and in particular the 
youth who enter into the priesthood." x 

Alas, at this same time, Charles Perraud began 
to understand that he himself also, in taking the 
ecclesiastical yoke, " loaded himself with too heavy 
a burden." 2 He dreaded lest the chief motive 
of his vocation might not have been the longing, 
unconscious and hasty, of striving after a love of 
the Ideal with Henry Perreyve and his brother. 
A deep melancholy possessed him, which made 
community life intolerable. In October, 1866, 
he left the house of the Oratorians to live with 
Pere Gratry in a calm and splendid apartment, 
rue Barbet-de-Jouy. 

In this house, whence his preachings called him 
forth quite frequently, Charles Perraud found no 
peace. With the coming of the Vatican Council, 
Catholics began to boil over in a great white heat 
of dogma and absolutism, which brought much 
suffering to him, sentimental and liberal as he 
was. He felt out of place more than ever among 
a clergy, positive and haughty. Some exper- 
iences brought home to him the incongruity. 

i It is interesting to read Gratry's book in the light of 
this statement, specially the passages treating of the ques- 
tion of error in a vocation (pp. 53-60), of Love's trans- 
fixion (pp. 77-88), and finally of Perreyve dead in a "sa- 
cred joy" (p. 85) and however "in terror" (p. 213). As 
to his death, Gratry wrote in the same style: "We must 
be absolutely truthful in all things and above all here." 
His book is not a biography: it is a romance. 

2 Letter to Pere Hyacinthe, May 1st, 1870. 



VOCATION 15 

Wednesday of Holy Week, 1869, he preached in 
favor of peace and was much reproached for it. 1 
Somewhat later, Pere Gratry and he were publicly 
found fault with by the Superior-General of the 
Oratory for having assisted at the Peace Con- 
ference. 2 

In spite of such failure, he was enough of a 
dreamer to look forward to the abrogation of 
clerical celibacy. He determined to draft a me- 
morial in favor of this for the Vatican Council. 
He fancied such a step would prove extremely 
helpful. His feelings were so strong, he wrote 
to Pere Hyacinthe (May 1st, 1870) that grant- 
ing even that his own death was near, he would 
none the less ask for the rest what he would not 
dare request for himself. Learning about the 
same time (end of April, 1870) that Pere Hya- 
cinthe Loyson was about to pass a few days with 
Doellinger, he begged the visitor to submit a res- 
ume of his researches and conclusions to the il- 

i L'Evangile de Paix. Sermon preached at Saint Roch, 
March 24th, 1869. The sermon was in behalf of a work 
not included in the scope of the regular course. 

2 This conference raised a great hue and cry. It was 
thought in fact that it might have prevented the war, 
which then seemed imminent. Two weeks before the con- 
ference, June 12th, 1869, Charles Perraud wrote to Mons. 
Frederick Passy: "You are aware that war within three 
weeks is spoken of. Would that I had the ability to 
speak and write everywhere against this abominable and 
wrongful project. Let us then unite as the League of 
Peace to stir up from now on for the next fifteen days 
public opinion against this war, which despotism demands 
but which strikes horror to all the sons of liberty." 



16 A MARRIED PRIEST 

lustrious theologian and ask his advice. This 
Pere Hyacinthe did and recorded the answer in 
his journal May 13th, 1870. Doellinger, thor- 
oughly imbued in ecclesiastical tradition, which 
was the gauge of his life and principles, answered : 
" There is not in all ecclesiastical tradition a 
single example of a priest married after his or- 
dination." This answer was so much the less sat- 
isfactory to Charles Perraud, as he had found a 
companion fit to bring him happiness. She was 
yet young, having just passed her thirtieth year, 
both a widow and childless, for her boy died when 
seven years old. 1 Like her director, she was 
pious and timid. They both strove against their 
mutual love till it became so strong as to result in 
their looking upon clerical celibacy as ari en- 
actment against nature. What was to be done? 
This stiff question they had before them for a 
long while without having the courage to face 
it. When consulted by them Pere Hyacinthe an- 
swered that their duty was to break off at once 
or marry simply and honestly, like their fellows. 
Neither one nor the other had the courage to do 
so. But to rejoice in a wider liberty Charles 
Perraud, about June, 1870, renounced his mem- 
bership in the Oratory. 

i Rosalie-Eugenie Raymond, born at Bordeaux about 
1837, married Baptiste Elias Duval. Their child, Elias, 
died in Paris, Feb. 28th, 1869. [The Oratorians state that 
she had been a servant of Mme. Perraud, the mother of 
Adolphe and Charles and it was at his mother's house that 
Charles first knew Rosalie. — Tr.] 



II 

TRYING YEARS 

1870-1872 

After his canonical release from the Oratory, 
Charles Perraud still continued to live with his 
dear master and friend, Pere Gratry, who also 
had left the Oratorians. As the latter had flung 
himself headlong into the discussions opposed to 
the dogma of Papal Infallibility, the Oratory, 
fearful of being compromised by such outspoken 
opposition, released him of all his obligations. 1 

The two ex-oratorians lived in the closest har- 
mony. They were in perfect accord upon all 
subjects, and Charles Perraud was not less op- 
posed to the work of the Council than his mas- 
ter. When their mutual friend, Pere Hyacinthe, 
went to bring to the newspaper, La France, his 
protest against the newly defined dogma, Charles 
Perraud hesitated not to accompany him, in cler- 
ical dress, even to the editorial chair. 2 

i For these details, see the " Vie de Gratry," by Pere 
Chauvin (Paris, Bloud, 1901) and M. E. Ledrain, "Por- 
traits et Souvenirs," 1869-1870. Revue Bleue, March 29th, 
April, 5th, 1902. 

2 This protest was reprinted in the work " De la Reforme 
Catholique" (1874), pp. 27-31. The Diary of Pere Hy- 
acinthe furnishes the proof of the perfect understanding 
Which then existed between Charles Perraud and himself. 
We add a few extracts: 

17 



18 A MARRIED PRIEST 

The war with Germany soon put aside the the- 
ological discussions. The son of the soldier of 
Waterloo regretted that he could not shoulder 
a musket, but he offered the service that lay in 
his power, and when, at the commencement of the 
siege of Paris, the National Guard was mobilized 
into marching battalions, he offered himself as 
chaplain to the Colonel of the 17th battalion, 
who accepted him with pleasure. On Decem- 
ber 2nd the battalion took part in an engage- 
ment at the railroad station Aux Boeufs and for 
many weeks it was charged with the advanced 

June 1, 1870. Lunch at P. Gratry's. Composed with 
him and P. Charles Perraud a letter for L'Univers. 

June 11th. Dinner at the Abbe Bernard's, Chaplain of 
the Normal School, and P. Charles Perraud. 

June 28th. Foundation in my person of a new order 
VOrdre de la Verite. Its spirit should demand an abso- 
lute and practical devotion to the reign of Truth among 
men. Its motto is : " God and Humanity in Jesus Christ." 

July 5th. P. Charles Perraud offered himself to God 
with me in the Ordre de la Ve'rite. Upon our knees we 
said together the " Our Father " in Pere Gratry's private 
chapel. 

July 9th. Talk on the Breviary with P. Charles Per- 
raud. 

July 28th. Made ready my protest against the Infalli- 
bility of the Pope. Visit to the Archbishop of Paris, to 
whom I read it. Dinner at P. Gratry's. Chat with the 
straightforward and courageous Charles Perraud. 

July 30th. My protest against the pretended dogma of 
Papal Infallibility appeared this evening in La France 
and will appear to-morrow in Les DSbates. I am much 
warmed up but very peaceful. Full of joy. A great duty 
is done. I feel myself at once so free and so catholic. P. 
Charles Perraud accompanied me to the office of La 
France, where I brought my protestation. 



TRYING YEARS 19 

posts of Vitry. During all this time the chaplain 
showed his pluck and courage. He pleased the 
official staff by his spirit and lightheadedness 
and he spent his days in rounds of visits among 
the squads in their encampments, doing for the 
men such little services as were in his power. 

"January 19th, 1871, the 17th battalion 
took an active part in the battle of Buzen- 
val. Led by its gallant colonel, it was at the 
head of the attacking column which rescued the 
village park. That day the Abbe Perraud, like 
all the officers and soldiers, had his part in their 
heroism and loyalty. From three o'clock in the 
morning he was on the march with the troops 
and up to midnight he was still at his post on 
the farm of La Fouilleuse, where was the ambu- 
lance." * 

The defeat of France left on the patriotic soul 
of Charles Perraud an ever open wound. A 
short while later another great sorrow took hold 
of his personal affections — the death of Pere 
Gratry. The last months of this philosopher 
were wretched. Stricken by a mortal illness, he 
sought relief at Montreux, Switzerland. Alone, 

1 These details were given by Colonel de Crisenoy, him- 
self, to M. l'Abbe Lacroix, who quoted them in a con- 
ference delivered in the church of St. Ambrose, March 10, 
1892. " M. l'Abbe Charles Perraud, sa vie et ses oeuvres " 
(Paris, Chapelliez, 1892, 80. p. 31). M. Lacroix, later on 
bishop of Tarentaise (1901-1907), followed Charles Per- 
raud in giving the conference at St. Ambroise. 

[After resigning his see, the Government named bishop 
Lacroix as a professor at the Sorbonne. — Tr.] 



20 A MARRIED PRIEST 

without much money, unfit to take care of him- 
self, he soon fell into a pitiable state. Charitable 
ladies noticed this priest, who seemed abandoned, 
and hastened to provide for his comforts. Worn 
out by his sickness and annoyed by letters from 
Pere Adolphe Perraud, who begged him unceas- 
ingly to submit to the definitions of the Vatican 
Council, Gratry ended by sending his adhesion 
in writing to Mgr. Guibert, the new archbishop 
of Paris. The letter runs thus : 

Montreux, Vaud, (Switzerland), 

November 25th, 1871. 
Monseigneur: 

If I had not been very ill and unable to write I 
would have long before this, sent you my expressions 
of welcome. 

To-day at least I wish, Monseigneur, to tell you 
simply that which it strikes me there is no need to 
say, namely, that I accept with all my brother 
priests the decrees of the Vatican Council. What- 
ever on this matter I have written previous to and 
contrary to these decrees, I withdraw. 

Kindly, Monseigneur, send me your blessing and 
pray for me. 

A. Gratry. 
Priest of the diocese of Paris. 

Hardly had this submission gone, than he felt 
the need of explaining it to those who had ad- 
mired his opposition. On November 28th he 
wrote to M. Legouve, his colleague in the French 
Academy : 



TRYING YEARS 21 

I fought inspired infallibility, the decree of the 
Council rejects inspired infallibility. I fought per- 
sonal infallibility, the decree favors official infalli- 
bility. Writers of the school that I look upon as 
excessive did not want infallibility ex cathedra as 
being too limited. The decree stands for infallibil- 
ity ex cathedra. I would dread almost scientific in- 
fallibility, political or government infallibility. The 
decree, however, declares for doctrinal infallibility 
only in matters of faith and morals. All this means 
not that I have not been guilty of errors in my dis- 
cussions. Doubtlessly I have been guilty of some 
both in this matter and in others, but once I recog- 
nize my error I blot it out and feel no humiliation 
therefrom. 1 

1 This letter was published whole for the first time by 
Pere Ingold in Demain, Feb. 22nd, 1907. Pere Chauvin 
and Cardinal Perraud in their lives of Gratry only gave 
its least interesting part. I here reprint only the post- 
script. In the Revue Internationale de The'ologie, April 
1907, Dr. E. Michaud thus appreciates it: "It is worth 
remarking upon these entirely sincere statements, so much 
the more sincere as coming from a dying man, worn out 
by sickness and the advices of week-kneed friends: 1st. 
That he used indifferently the words ' decision ' and ' de- 
cree ' while he used neither the word * definition ' nor the 
word ' dogma ' ; it is therefore in his eyes only a simple 
decree. 2nd. That the words ' blot out,' used on purpose 
to mark his submission to the decree, is in no wise synony- 
mous with ' retract,' still less so with ' refute.' 3rd. That 
he insists upon this, that the infallibility doctrine in mat- 
ters of faith and morals is neither scientific, nor politic, 
nor governmental, nor inspired, nor personal, but only 
official and limited by ex cathedra, and he guards against 
• pointing out what ex cathedra demands. 4th. That his 
single intention was not to separate himself from the 
Church. He says not from the Pope or the Papacy, or 



£2 A MARRIED PRIEST 

On January 9th, he wrote of his own initiative 
to Doellinger, who had not written to him since 
his retraction : * 

Dear Worthy and Honorable Friend. 

Deeply know I what I do and I adore the truth 
alone. I ask you to be absolutely convinced of this. 
I would prove it in a striking way, were I able to 
work. But this note almost exhausts my strength of 
a day. Say this to P. Hyacinthe. I repeat it 
strongly: Servant and Worshiper of the Truth 
alone. Behold what I have been from infancy till 
to-day. My best and cordial regards, 

A. Gratry. 

On January 11th he wrote likewise to M. Fred- 
eric Passy the following hitherto unpublished let- 
ter: 

even the Roman Church, — only from the Church. Did 
Gratry confound the Church with the Pope and the Pa- 
pacy? Certainly not. With the Roman Church? Per- 
haps. Perhaps, too, he had not studied to the bottom, as 
was usual in France in 1871, the reasons of this distinction. 
However, the confusion in itself is serious and to-day will 
not stand. It is clear that the Roman Church is only a 
particular church, that it is not even the Catholic church 
of the West; therefore it is not the Catholic Church." 

1 In his life of Gratry, by a confusion hard to explain in 
an ordinarily exact historian, Pere Chauvin assigns (p. 
457) to Doellinger a letter of Pere Hyacinthe, dated De- 
cember 23rd, 1871, and published by Pere Hyacinthe in his 
book, " De La Reforme Catholique," pp. 46-49. Pere 
Chauvin assigns also (p. 458) to Pere Hyacinthe a letter 
which is not his. Pere Hyacinthe wrote only one letter to 
Gratry, that of December 23rd, 1871. He got no direct 
answer; but he had one indirectly in Gratry's letter to 
Doellinger, here quoted. 



TRYING YEARS 23 

Dear Friend: 

Judge not. Deeply know I what I do and I have 
no strife in my conscience and I worship the truth 
alone. 

This would become clear as day to you, if I had 
a few hours for the needful labor. But this note is 
almost all that I can do in one day. I can not dic- 
tate. God bless you and judge not before under- 
standing. 

A. Gratry. 

On January 20th he wrote to Madame Merri- 
man, who soon afterwards became the wife of 
Pere Hyacinthe Loyson, the following letter: 

Montreux, Vaud (Switzerland), 

January 20th, 1872. 
Oh, Friend and Sister, what a joy to me was your 
letter. Save one word that I understand not or 
admit not. You know my unending groan since 
our separation. I grieved at not having made you 
like myself; at not seeing you inoculated with my 
convictions. But thanks to God, I find you again. 
I feared to refind you hard and severe. This is 
why for almost a month I shunned writing to you. 
But thanks to God, here you are, Child of Heaven. 
I did not know of your illness. Alas ! Alas ! For 
myself I can as yet perhaps be cured, but I rely 
not much upon that. I suffer dreadfully. But you, 
I trust that you will live. Live and know well and 
hold this firmly, it is truer than any one knows. 
From my childhood I am the fervent servant, the 
scrupulous worshiper of Truth alone, and this 
to my last breath. Know this well and rejoice 



24 A MARRIED PRIEST 

over it. Deeply know I what I do and I adore my 
saintly spouse — the Truth. I have not been killed 
by the Moral code. 1 Behold in peace, in calmness, 
in knowledge I enjoy a power of enormous resist- 
ance. The fall of France, without as well as within, 
has affected me very much. But Church affairs I 
gave myself to from my youth, and I distinguish 
that which must be maintained and that which God 
will destroy root and branch. 

A. Gratry. 

I bless you from the depths of my heart. Au 
revoir till we meet, at any rate in heaven. 2 

On learning how serious was Pere Gratry's 
state of health, Charles Perraud hastened to him. 
On January 17th he arrived at Montreux. Five 
days later he wrote to M. Frederic Passy the fol- 
lowing, hitherto unpublished, letter: 

January 22nd, 1872. 
Dear Sir: 

P. Gratry, to stay with whom I came a few days 
ago, charges me to write to you and I am very 
happy at his entrusting to me this task. As to the 
news I have to send you of our poor patient, it is, 
alas, as sad as possible. Daily the sickness grows 

1 M. Hyacinthe Loyson explains this phrase : " I know 
that in this Pere Gratry deceived himself. His friends 
recalled what he had said when writing his courageous let- 
ter: e They will condemn me and I will. die of it.'" — De 
La Reforme Catholique," p. 56. 

2 This letter M. Hyacinthe Loyson published in part in 
his book, " De La Reforme Catholique," p. 56. I give it 
here as it appears in his journal under date of Feb. 17th, 
1872. 



TRYING YEARS 25 

evidently worse! The difficulty in swallowing and 
in speaking increases, the tumor ceases not to grow, 
and without a miracle the issue, fatal and perhaps 
near at hand, is inevitable. His sharp sufferings 
are not continual ; but what terrible moral anguish. 

Up to now, in his resignation, sweetness and 
courage, Pere Gratry is wonderful. His great and 
fine mind shines in all its brightness. He busies 
himself always with ideas, and were it not for the 
extreme difficulty he has in speaking Theology 
would often be to the front. In this respect he 
charges me to ask of you some explanations on what 
you said to him in your last letter in regard to M. 
L. Veuillot and the liberties which the latter re- 
cently ventured upon in speaking of the Pope. P. 
Gratry asked myself what I knew about it and I 
had to acknowledge that I knew nothing at all. 

You will do a charity, dear sir, in answering him 
as soon as possible and in forwarding to him the 
Articles of L. Veuillot, if you have them. Our poor 
patient has not lost all hope of cure. Hence then, 
in writing to him, kindly bear this in mind. Need 
I ask you to pray for him? God is all powerful. 
He could preserve for us the great and beautiful 
soul. At any rate, ask that the grace of this super- 
natural peace in which he lives and suffers may be 
his unto the end. 

Accept, dear sir, my affectionate and devoted re- 
g arc *s. Charles Perraud. 

This address is enough: 

Le R. P. Gratry, 

Vernex-Montreux, Switzerland. 



26 A MARRIED PRIEST 

P. S. — P. Gratry charges me to say to you that 
he has just finished a bit of writing wherein he ex- 
plains the reasons and specially the nature of his 
submission to the Council's decree. He has already 
given, in brief, these explanations in a letter to M. 
Legouve, who, unhappily and without my knowing 
why, has not consented to have this letter published. 
As for myself, I was not with Pere Gratry when 
he sent his letter to the Archbishop of Paris. I 
regret very much that he started in with that. It 
would have been better had he begun by. publishing 
the writing that I read but a few days ago. In it 
are exact statements and distinctions of very great 
weight, especially in a question where every shade 
of meaning carries considerable weight. In every 
way would it be a mistake to suppose that P. Gratry 
has set aside all evidence. May God leave him time 
to say upon this subject all that I know he would 
desire to say. 

The crisis of the patient soon shut out all hope. 
Charles Perraud informed his brother, who ar- 
rived January 30th. Gratry died in their arms 
February 7th. 

What became of those final explanations, upon 
which Gratry so much counted? His literary 
heir, Adolphe Perraud, Cardinal-Bishop of 
Autun, took good care never to publish them, 
even in the brochure, which he entitled " Le P. 
Gratry, His Last Days, His Spiritual Testa- 
ment." (Paris, Douniol, 1872.) 



Ill 

THE SECRET MARRIAGE 

1872-1873 

After Gratry's death, Charles Perraud felt 
himself alone. The loneliness crushed him. 
After some months of a dreadful strife with his 
scruples, he made up his mind to marry, if not 
in public, at least " before the Lord." 

One morning in July, 1872, Madame Duval — 
such was the name of his choice — received com- 
munion at his hand, and after mass at once en- 
tered the sacristy, where he gave her a blessing 
which both regarded as the seal of their union. 1 

The newly married couple left on a short 
honeymoon, as it would be called usually, spent 
at Brussels. Pere Hyacinthe, who by that time 
had concluded to give the example of a public 
marriage, learned of his friend's step, and was 
asked his opinion about it. He sent him the fol- 
lowing letter: 

1 Only one other case of such self-made marriage do we 
know of, — that of Urbain Grandier, Cure of Loudun, who 
married himself at night in his parish church of St. Peter, 
Loudun, to Madeleine de Brou. Grandier was burned alive 
under Richelieu. The charge was that he had bewitched 
an Ursuline nun of Loudun. — Tr. 

27 



28 A MARRIED PRIEST 

Paris-Passy, Aug. 3d, 1872. 
My Dearest Friend: 

Your letter touches me deeply. I would not love 
you as I do, if I would not speak out to you in all 
frankness and sincerity. Pardon me then and listen 
to me. You are weak of will, I was going to add, 
of conscience. You fear to put yourself at odds 
with the Church and you see not how you put your- 
self in strife with God. You are aware that never 
in any wise have I pushed you on to this great and 
solemn act. On the contrary, I told you that if 
you could, in a spirit of generosity and irrevocably, 
put aside once and for all your dreams, it would 
perhaps prove better, because of the backsliding and 
weakness of your character. To this alone I ex- 
horted you, viz: Come to some decision. What I 
condemned and what I now condemn is this un-. 
healthy state, this atmosphere, in my eyes noisome, 
wherein I see two souls destroying one another. 
God be pleased that you fell not into it sooner. 

When you left Paris, without acknowledging your 
act and without desiring for it the signs of legality 
and dignity that should belong to it, I concealed not 
my sorrow nor hid my blame. I was fearing, as 
has happened, that God would not bless such con- 
duct. 1 At all times I based my hope upon your re- 

i Madame Duval fell sick at Brussels. On April 23rd, 
1907, apropos of this letter that I had M. Hyacinthe Loy- 
son re-read, he wrote me: " It would be absurd to charge 
God with the responsibility of the unending fruitless 
martyrdom which my two friends suffered. It would not 
be even just to attribute it to the law of clerical celibacy. 
If Charles Perraud, swayed by the force of ' Catholic ' 
prejudices which he could not shake off, believed himself 
bound by the obligation of celibacy, he should have ac- 



THE SECRET MARRIAGE 29 

flections and soon a letter from you comes to con- 
firm me in these hopes. You speak to me " of new 
duties which you have contracted before God and 
which rank before all other duties, which day by 
day can increase and before whose fulfillment, cost 
what it may, you will not fail." And now only 
four or five days later, all this seems forgotten. 
You lose your head and heart before the opposition 
of your friends, which you should have foreseen and 
which you are about to justify. Again you are 
making ready to return to Paris, like a schoolboy 
after a prank. And such a prank. Instead of sup- 
porting and enlightening your companion by hiding 
from her your own troubles, you add your weak- 
nesses to the weight of hers and you help to drag 
down into stupid terrors that conscience, a yet poorly 
enlightened one. This it is which is known as 
Catholic morality, priestly conscience, all the while 
without realizing that no greater injury can be 
inflicted upon the Church and the priesthood. I 
will remain your friend even to the end, nothing 
will separate me from your poor soul, victim of its 
own weakness, but so upright and so generous! De- 
pend upon my love till death itself, but if you enter 

cepted it bravely, without striving to escape it by a 
secret marriage, which could give neither peace of soul nor 
joy of heart. If, on the contrary, as he really thought, 
he was within his rights as a man and a Christian in 
marrying her whom he honestly loved, he should have 
put, without hesitancy, the law of God above that of man. 
The truth is that the dreadful sufferings in which his life 
was passed arose because of a will too weak for a deed of 
duty, difficult and perhaps heroic. I blamed my friend; 
above all, I felt for him. I loved him none the less, — I 
may add, — almost venerated him." 



30 A MARRIED PRIEST 

upon this way which is unworthy of you and which 
will be without a future, spare me, I beg of you, 
and ask my advice no more. 

I have put off my leaving until Wednesday morn- 
ing, Aug. 7th. If you wish to see me, you have 
still time, and if you wish to pass through incognito, 
I offer you a share of my little home. 

For me, I am going to be away quite a while and 
during the time will take probably an important 
step. Far from stopping me, the sad and weak- 
kneed adventure of which I am the confidant would 
give me new strength. 

Adieu, dear, good, poor friend. I embrace you 
with the greatest tenderness and I am entirely, 
Yours in the Lord, 

Hyacinthe. , 

It was at Brussels that the Abbe Charles Per- 
raud saw in the newspapers the ringing letter in 
which M. Hyacinthe Loyson thought it a duty to 
explain to the public the marriage which he had 
entered upon legally and publicly at London. 

Stubbornly loyal to the prinicples of the Cath- 
olic Church, he declared: 

I am not in any wise bound by her abuses, and 
among the very worst of these must be ranked per- 
petual vows. The error of Luther lay not in the 
chaste and pious marriage, which the most of those 
who cursed him should have imitated, it was only 
in his breaking away from the legitimate tradi- 
tions and necessary unity of the Church. 

Yes, I am sure France, like the Church, has need 
of the example which I give and of which the fu« 



THE SECRET MARRIAGE 31 

hire, failing the present, will gather the benefit. I 
know the exact state of my country, and when it 
was willing to listen to my voice I ceased not to 
preach to it the salvation of the family. Putting 
aside without regret the rich and deceitful veil of its 
prosperity, I would lay bare the two wounds which 
corrode it and which, both one and the other, breed 
marriage without love and love without marriage, 
and this means marriage and love without Chris- 
tianity. (Conference of Notre Dame, on the Fam- 
ily, 1866.) 

I know also the real state of our clergy. I know 
what they can be in devotedness and virtue, but I 
am not unaware how great the need among many of 
them to be put in touch with the interests, longings, 
and duties of human nature and civil society. Only 
by betaking himself from a blind asceticism and 
from a Church more political than religious will 
the priest, once again man and citizen, find himself 
at the same time a true priest. " Let him govern 
his own house," said Saint Paul, " keeping his chil- 
dren in submission and in every sort of honesty: 
For if a man knoweth not how to rule his own 
house, how shall he take care of the Church of 
God?" (I Tim. iii, 4, 5.) 

Behold the reform without which, I dare say, 
every other will prove vain and empty. Leave the 
spirit of God, if we believe in his power, to keep 
up among us an elite of priests and sisters whose 
celibacy, ever free and voluntary, would be a state 
of purity — a state of joy, or at least of peace in 
sacrifice. But meanwhile let us hasten the day 
when the law of the Church and that of France will 
recognize, in liberty, in chastity, in dignity, the 



32 A MARRIED PRIEST 

marriage of the priest, that is to say: the gather- 
ing around a model hearthstone of all the strength 
of the family and all the power of religion. 1 

Shortly afterward, apropos of this document, 
Charles Perraud wrote to his friend the follow- 
ing letter, in which he resorted to some tricks of 
his pen in order to escape detection should it be 
lost: 

Like everybody else, I read the letter in which 
you announced your decisive step. I regret that our 
friend X. (i. e., Charles Perraud himself, — Tr.) 
is so circumstanced that it is simply impossible 
for him to act as openly as you did. His case is 
different from yours and his conscience, moreover, 
burdens him with different duties. However that 
may be, you know in what measure his heart beats 
with yours and also in what measure he hopes for 
us, for himself, for a great number of others, a 
future better and more suitable to the true inter- 
ests of Catholicism. For my part, I heartily con- 
gratulate you upon the clear language in which you 
declare that you intend to remain a Catholic. The 

i This letter, dated Aug. 25th, 1872, was published in 
the Temps, Sept. 3d, the day when M. Hyacinthe Loyson 
was married in London. 

(To the translator, the doctrinal, if he may use the 
term, part of this letter is absurd. What guaranty 
could any man give that the home of a married priest, 
any more than any other man's, would be a model? 
Does not the wife count? In this as in all other matters 
priests would be neither better nor worse than their fel- 
lows. Goodness never yet went by caste or followed pro- 
fessional lines. — Tr.) 



THE SECRET MARRIAGE 33 

more I reflect, the more am I convinced that the 
truth lies in this. Fight with unconquerable energy 
the abuses in the Church; love, defend, and serve 
the Church herself with an energy none the less 
unconquerable. X. (Charles Perraud) charges me 
to say to you that he suffers from being obliged to 
remain for a time under a certain mystery, and thus 
act in a way quite the reverse of yours. He is not 
free in that matter, but he feels sure that later on 
everything will be made clear. Unhappily, for 
some years he has been in a state of exhaustion 
that he relishes not and only asks what he terms 
an honorable release and a merited rest. He would 
wish, more than all, to be silent and be forgotten, at 
least until such time as he might in some way regain 
his health and strength. The reform also that he 
would ask, if he wrote, would be less radical, and 
specially less hurried than yours. But in truth 
every soul, led by the light of its conscience and 
the call of God, marches as best it may. 

I ask you to keep on praying for us and I beg of 
God to give you every blessing. 1 

Charles Perraud's marriage was not a happy 
one. If their love was at all times the same, still 
she was always worrying in fear lest the public 

i Letter from Brussels, Sept. 7th, 1872. On the 19th 
of the same month, M. Hyacinthe Loyson, on his way to 
Cologne to attend the Congress of Old Catholics, saw at 
Brussels the Abbe Perraud and his companion. "They 
pass," wrote he in his journal, "their honeymoon in se- 
cret, rather their foolish and painful escapade." Madame 
t)uval was still ill and M. Loyson saw them in their own 
room at the hotel. The interview was sad and solemn. 



34 A MARRIED PRIEST 

would suspect the real state of affairs between 
the Abbe and herself, who was known as his house- 
keeper. Moreover, Madame Duval had no for- 
tune and Charles Perraud longed to secure her 
the ease which without her he might have had 
more readily. Neuralgia, however, not only kept 
him from preaching, but also led him into many 
expensive trips in the hope of relief, which at 
times led to separation, but on his return the pair 
took up again their sadly sweet home life. On 
returning from a journey to Italy in 1873, 
Charles Perraud wrote to M. Hyacinthe Loyson 
as follows: 

July 23rd, 1873. 
My Dear Friend: 

It is now six months since I have written to you. 1 
Many times I wished to do so, but my courage 
failed. Worn out by misfortune and suffering, we 
have come to a state of abjection, in which all effort 
is become, as it were, impossible. The little energy 
that is left is used up day by day in striving against 
complete despair and in casting off the floods of 
bitterness or anger which threaten to sweep away 
everything before them. So we drop by instinct 

i The letter here referred to was torn up or lost. The 
journal of M. Hyacinthe Loyson has the following ex- 
tract, which he copied on receiving it at Verona, Feb. 3d, 
1873: 

" I thank you for your prayers : I earnestly ask you to 
keep them up for me. The sufferings of X and Z 
(Charles Perraud and his wife — Tr.) are and will be 
such, no matter what happens, that God would be merci- 
ful to them in calling them soon to Himself." 



THE SECRET MARRIAGE 35 

into a gloomy silence and a bitter loneliness, as ani- 
mals, mortally stricken, fly and seek to die alone in 
the heart of the forest. Again, in a measure this 
is correct, for first it is useless to speak of a sorrow 
which no one could solace, and also because it is 
better not to inflict pain to no good end upon those 
who love you. 

X. and Z., for reasons that I can not give you, 
have only to choose between various ways of death; 
they have mutually decided to attempt once more 
that up to which a year ago a suffering that almost 
drove them beyond all self-control was leading them 
violently and suddenly. 

In your last letter to X. you told him: " I re- 
fuse to have an opinion about your situation and 
specially to advise you." In fact, God only knew 
the unheard of complications of a misfortune which, 
as I now realize, will end only in death. 

Why does God allow such lives, in which a pierc- 
ing sorrow keeps on growing till it kills? This is 
a question that daily thousands of miserable hu- 
man creatures put to themselves. Toward the end 
of my journey I met often a wretch, half of whose 
face had been eaten away by a cancer. In one 
hand he carried a handkerchief with which to hide 
his ugly sore, and when that hand became too tired 
he used the other. How many times has the sight 
of the poor fellow stopped the murmurs in my heart 
and upon my lips! I looked at him from afar, I 
prayed for him. Unable, morally and financially, 
tp prolong the sad and lonely journey, I prepared 
to return hither like a soldier marching to battle, 
where he fears he will be killed. I said to myself, 
You also, you will change the hand. 



36 A MARRIED PRIEST 

Z (Madame Duval, — Tr.) is again sick and this 
time with a rheumatic attack, and has not left the 
bed for three weeks. A few days ago she began to 
get better, but when the soul is ill the body is 
healed very slowly. Z., however, tells me that it 
would be impossible for her to accept and to endure 
the situation, much less painful, however, among 
friends who know you. 1 

In fact, beyond the likeness between both loves, 
so deep and so lasting on the part of both one and 
the other, everything else is entirely different in 
the situation of X. and Z and that of their friends. 

The sole issue for X. and Z., one they had fondly 
dreamed of, had been whether at R.(ome) the 
resignation of X. would be accepted. If such a 
wonder ever happened, they could have still some 
years of peace, if not of happiness, in this life. 
But, alas! the religious world, no more than the 
political, wishes to hear of useful progress or of 
peaceful reforms. 

Your conference upon " Ultramontanism and the 
Revolution," 2 the only one that I had the chance to 
read, pictures only too faithfully that dangerous 
and deplorable swinging between two extremes, 
both of which are almost equally disastrous to hu- 
manity. Be assured that no distances or separations 
or hindrances of any sort that may be between us 
have either shaken or lessened our friendship. 

i Mons. and Mdme. Hyacinthe Loyson. They did not 
think the situation so sorrowful. 

2 A lecture delivered June 17th, 1873, before the French 
residents of Geneva and published as a pamphlet. It 
was reprinted in the volume " Ni Clericaux ni Atheis " 
(Paris, Marpon and Flammarion, 1889). 



THE SECRET MARRIAGE 37 

Athwart silence and separation souls may be near 
one another, as very often they are widely apart 
amid the surroundings and under the pretexts of 
intimacy. 

We pray God for you. Ask of Him also to pre- 
serve us from the misfortune of doubting his good- 
ness or charging to Him the blind and cruel hard- 
ness of men. Pray that our agony by day and by 
night is not lost in His eyes, but that it be added to 
that storehouse of universal expiation in which also 
share so many poor creatures better and more inno- 
cent than we. 

Send me news of yourself and your family. If 
we must live apart for the days still left us, I hope 
that we shall forever find ourselves with those whom 
I lost and whose absence weighs daily more sor- 
rowfully upon my soul. 

My respectful regard to Madame. 

I embrace you with all my heart. 



IV 
CATHOLIC REFORM 

1873 

Very likely, if a child had been born to them, 
Charles Perraud and Madame Duval would have 
realized their duty as a married couple to be quite 
otherwise than to start out and bury themselves, 
as Charles put it, in some distant place of the 
world like America or Australia. 

But seeing that, with God's permission, their 
union remained without offspring, they concluded 
not to go to any extreme. Timid and of refined 
feelings, Madame Duval wished not to cause scan- 
dal. As to the Abbe, his prudence was much less 
influenced by personal reasons than by the love 
he had for his brother. Adolphe was then a shin- 
ing light in the Oratory and a hopeful candidate 
for the Mitre. Charles, who loved him deeply 
and knew also his ambitions, wished not to shat- 
ter his future. 

Now, whatever he might do, it would hurt his 
brother. If he decided to leave his country, he 
had been too much in the public view for his de- 
parture to be overlooked. Less still could he 
wave the banner of religious reform, more or 
less radical, as did M. Hyacinthe Loyson, who 



CATHOLIC REFORM 39 

attempted to found at Geneva a " liberal Catholic 
church." A priest who went to join M. Hya- 
cinthe Loyson having called on the Abbe Per- 
raud, the latter spoke to him so freely as after- 
wards to regret it. He felt in duty bound to 
write to his friend under date of September 8th, 
1873: 

For quite a while and in a friendly way we spoke 
to this clergyman. Only I forgot to ask him to keep 
absolute secrecy in my case and I beg you to make 
known to him as soon as possible this request. He 
seemed^ however, to me intelligent and wise enough 
to be discreet, and probably because of this I 
thought not of suggesting to him what, I feel sure, 
he himself understood and carried out. 

My own interests do not bother me so much as 
those of my brother, whose advance it is not fit that 
I should spoil at the very moment when everybody 
believes that he is to become a bishop. Moreover, 

I gave no personal confidence to Mr. , but 

he can clearly see two things at least: first, my 
theory of celibacy, imposed in perpetuity, and next, 
my discouragement and the longing I have to be 
able to end my days in peace and free from worry 
about all religious and specially clerical quarrels. 

I was delighted on learning that Madame L. en- 
joys good health. I desire for her with all my 
heart a happy deliverance. Z. (Mad. Duval) 
thanks you for your remembrances and for the his- 
pitality you offer her as well as X. (Charles Per- 
raud) ; but it is in truth impossible for them to ac- 
cept your kind invitation. X. envies you your hap- 



40 A MARRIED PRIEST 

piness, but in the strange net work in which on all 
sides he finds himself, I doubt if he can ever find 
in this life a little contentment and peace. 

Furthermore, it is not well to forget what he 
said to you from the very start of his relations with 
you, viz.: in place of feeling, as you do, the desire 
to be a reforming apostle, he believes that he was 
entirely deceived in becoming a priest and only 
wishes to return to the lay life. This disposition of 
soul makes the difficulties worse, because in that case 
it would be necessary to have a personal fortune, 
which he now lacks. I often see these two unfor- 
tunates and in the bottom of my heart I believe that 
God would do them a great favor in calling them as 
soon as possible to Himself. As to myself, I strive 
always to overcome my headaches, now so frequent 
and exhausting, but I progress but very slowly in 
the examining, correcting, copying, &c, &c, of those 
manuscripts, which however must be used. 1 

Kindly remember me to Madame L. and believe 
in my sincere and steady affection. 

I enclose a letter of X. 

The same letter had Charles Perraud's reflec- 
tions on the organization which M. Hyacinthe 
Loyson might give to his church. 

My Dear Friend: 

Since our talk with the person who has rejoined 

i Gratry's manuscripts, left by will to Adolphe Perraud. 
They were published in two volumes, " Souvenirs de ma 
jeunesse" and "Meditations inedites " (1874). Charles 
did almost all the work of editing, but for his brother's 
benefit and under his control. 



CATHOLIC REFORM 41 

you, I have given much thought to your enterprise, 
to the difficulties it entails, and to the means by 
which to overcome those hindrances. Permit me to 
tell you very frankly but with a hurried pen, hence 
without much order, the ideas which have come to 
me and which seem to me might be of some use to 
you. I believe you are going to the Congress of 
Constance (viz: the third of the Old Catholics, 
opened September 12th, 1873). You will speak 
there and probably your word will help much in 
the course affairs will take. 

Behold, then, what I regard as indispensable, if 
you wish to be indeed useful to souls and to the 
Church. Sound it forth and repeat it many times, 
that you wish not to found a church, that you aim 
only to create a resting place, a refuge, a centre 
of common action for all Catholics, who wish these 
two things necessary for the advance of the Gospel 
in this age. 

First: To continue Catholics and in so doing to 
labor for the Church's reform in her head and mem- 
bers, a reform in vain looked for and for so long 
a while. 

Next: To propose and above all to impose only 
those two points, continue Catholics and labor for 
the necessary reform within the Church, but to 
touch neither Theology nor the Sacraments, nor 
even worship; and, by the way, I have learned with 
pain that you are already started in that way, in 
which you should understand that you can not stop. 
In my view, it would be far better to retrace your 
steps in this matter and explain why you did so. 

In resuming my view and striving to have you 
grasp it well before I develop it, it seems clear to 



42 A MARRIED PRIEST 

me that you should demand, insist upon, and even 
sketch out the reforms indispensable in the Catholic 
Church, but that you yourself neither should nor 
can carry them out; the Church alone has the mis- 
sion to reform herself. 

If the axiom, in necessariis unitas, in dubiis lib- 
ertas, the true safeguard of all interests, was not 
completely forgotten and even trampled under foot 
by the present Church government, a congress like 
that which you hold at Geneva and elsewhere would 
not be in any way a serious matter, for then men 
might remain in the Hierarchy, within the law, 
and both speak freely and demand justice. 

It is the misfortune of our times that places souls 
in this cruel alternative either of remaining within 
the hierarchy and thus without any means of look- 
ing forward to any reform of the Church, or of 
stepping forth for a time from the Hierarchy and 
outside the law in order to labor for these reforms 
which the Church needs. 

A comparison, which I consider very correct, will 
make you still better understand what, in my opin- 
ion, should be the attempts at reform in Switzerland, 
Germany, and elsewhere. 

These should be from a moral standpoint what in 
reality had been those towns and countries of 
the Middle Ages and the days of the Inquisition that 
offered hospitality, freedom, and above all, a haven 
to Catholics, and allowed them to speak freely, safe 
from denunciations, prisons, torture, and pyres. I 
regard this comparison as strictly exact, for suppose 
that to-day a priest, the most irreproachable, the 
most orthodox, and even the most ultra-montane, had 
the boldness to demand the reforms needed in the 



CATHOLIC REFORM 43 

Church; on the spot he would be denounced, tor- 
tured, burned alive, morally speaking — as he would 
have been actually five or six hundred years ago. 

It is my conviction that your work will be fruit- 
ful, if limited to this. It will be sterile and even 
miscarry very quickly if you take up new creeds or 
innovations, not pressing and not called for by the 
need of saving souls. 

If, then, I were in your place, I would impose 
upon myself and propose to my followers a sys- 
tematic abstention from all innovation in doctrinal 
matters, in the administration of the sacraments, 
in the liturgy itself. I say not that the Church 
should not examine later on, for instance, the ques- 
tion of the liturgy in Latin or the vernacular, but 
I do say that you yourself should not and can not 
touch these matters without serious drawbacks. 

Allow me now to take up some details in order 
to make my thought clearer: 

I understand that you say the Mass or a part of 
it in French. First: How was this urgent and 
above all needed either for the salvation of a single 
soul or for the progress of the Gospel or for the 
good of the Church? 

And next, How can you hinder such of your fol- 
lowers who like it better to say the Mass in 
Latin? Besides, once you begin to make changes, 
additions, suppressions, who will fix their limits and 
where put a stop to them? If you are twenty 
priests, you will soon have twenty different ways 
of saying Mass and the faithful at Geneva, any 
more than in France, will not put up for any length 
of time with a religion whose worship is left to the 
caprice of everybody. In fact, kindly notice that 



44 A MARRIED PRIEST 

the Gospel merely shows us Jesus Christ consecrat- 
ing bread and wine and giving Communion to the 
Apostles. 

If you do not impose upon yourselves, one and 
all, the maintenance for the time being of the forms 
of worship such as are in use in the Catholic Church, 
I dare to predict that soon you will have followers 
who will be content, after the Gospel fashion, to con- 
secrate bread and wine and perhaps even, if the 
thought struck them, to do so at meal times, in order 
to imitate more closely Jesus Christ. 

Then in my opinion it would be necessary that 
every one prepare and write out his notions of re- 
form even in regard to matters of detail, but pledge 
himself to innovate nothing in practice until the 
forthcoming Council, truly free, which alone will 
have the mission and authority to regulate it and 
every other question. How great and adequate a 
mission for you and the others, to demand, to pre- 
pare for, also to conduct these reforms and this next 
Council, truly free! In my opinion you will get it 
on the death of Pius IX, but on condition that you 
stand within the limits I point out and that you will 
understand that you are nothing more than helpers 
of the Church, obliged for the time being to serve 
her beyond her hierarchy and her canon law, and 
that in place of laboring for separation you work 
to bring back as soon as possible all Catholics to 
unity in truth and liberty. The Truth will make 
you free. 

On this subject recall two things which now come 
into my mind: your first cry on leaving the convent. 
I appeal to a Council truly free. Behold the true 
aim. Next, the text of St. Augustine which you 



CATHOLIC REFORM 45 

gave to M. de Noirlieu, in which the situation of 
certain extraordinary servants of the Church was 
so clearly pointed out. 1 Behold the true situation. 
Beyond the fact that your innovations would pro- 
voke disagreements and divisions among you, ex- 
cept in the impossible chance that you would at- 
tempt to impose your ideas and even your apprecia- 
tions upon all your followers, these innovations are 
immensely wrong in causing much fright to souls 
and leading to the belief that you are founding a 
new sect, and of conj uring up the Abbe Chatel 2 and 
others 3 ... in a word, of hindering a 

i " Providence often allows that from troubles stirred 
up by carnal men pious people are shut out from the 
Christian community. If they bear up under this affront 
and injustice patiently in order not to disturb the peace 
of the Church and in striving not to yield to innovations 
schismatic or heretical, they will teach men in what senti- 
ments and with what love God should be served. Such 
persons firmly resolve to re-enter into the Community 
when the troubles are gone, or if this is not possible for 
them either during the trial or in order not to stir it up 
more by their return, they keep the desire to advise those 
whose return they shun without forming a separate Com- 
munity. They defend even to death and by their testi- 
mony maintain the faith which they upheld in the Catho- 
lic Church. The Father who seeth every hidden thing 
crowns this last. Doubtless such persons are few; how- 
ever, they are not wanting: indeed, they are more nu- 
merous than is believed." — De Vera Religione VI. This 
text is well known. The late Father Tyrrell quoted it with 
the remark that St. Augustine never retracted it. 

2 Priest of the diocese of Moulins, founder at Paris in 
1831, of a petty " Eglise Catholique francaise." He had 
himself consecrated a bishop in the Joannite Church by 
Machault, known as the bailiff John of Jutland, and called 
himself Primate of the Gauls. (Machault lived in Paris 
and claimed to be a bailiff of the Knights Templar. — Tr.) 

3 Illegible. 



46 A MARRIED PRIEST 

great current of Catholic opinion forming among 
you. Now this current I think it is possible to cre- 
ate and by its means, after the death of Pius IX., 
to lead up to the Council truly free, which I would 
willingly name " The Council of Salvation." 

Allow me again to remind you that in the paths 
of innovations it is a short step to Protestantism 
and even, as was the case of the Abbe Mouls, 1 to 
purely natural religion. So also Mons. 2 told me 
that the Abbe H. 3 regards it as idolatry to expose 
the Blessed Sacrament in a remonstrance; another 
will suppress the reserving of it in the Tabernacle; 
still another will soon believe in no way in the Real 
Presence. 

You will answer me in regard to marriage, for 
example, that you have already wrought that re- 
form in your own life. First, I believe that if you 
had vindicated marriage without yourself marry- 
ing, you would have made a much greater impres- 
sion. Besides, it is one of those questions which 
for certain men, at least, can be looked upon as 
urgent, as touching upon the salvation of the soul, 
as not being without danger if put off to a remote 
period. Moreover, you impose not upon your hear- 
ers marriage, and I fancy you agree with me that 

i Canon of Bordeaux, who left the Church after the 
Vatican Council and lived in retirement at Brussels. He 
died July 5th, 1878. 

2 The same party that is referred to in the first lines of 
this letter. 

3 Doubtless Abbe Hurtault, priest of the diocese of 
Tours, honorary canon, one time secretary of Archbishop 
Guibert, afterward Cardinal, Archbishop of Paris, and 
Cure" of Ballan, who joined M. Hyacinthe Loyson at 
Geneva, May 31st, 1873. 



CATHOLIC REFORM 47 

you believe that you will have gained your point in 
regard to clerical celibacy only when you have won 
its reform in a Council truly free, but because it 
will stand for the entire Church, enjoying the au- 
thority which neither you nor your followers — 
since you are only individuals — can enjoy. 1 

If you limit your efforts to preparing the re- 
forms and providing shelter, food, care, chance of 
an honorable holy life, the possibility of marriage 
even to those priests who would wish to marry and 
prepare for it with you, there would follow another 
great advantage; that is, besides your publicly 
known adherents, you would win, by little and little, 
but quickly and surely, a number of secret follow- 
ers, and it will be the multitudes of these latter 
who will, by fashioning the opinion of the day, 
bring about the reforms and the free Council, feas- 
ible after the death of Pius IX. 

I am led to think that if in your speeches, per- 
haps in a manifesto, better still in the decisions of 
your congresses, you would appeal to the clergy of 
the entire world in the way I point out to you, you 

i This passage of the Abbe Perraud's letter alludes to 
a rumor that M. Hyacinthe Loyson would impose mar- 
riage on the priests who joined him. This was a mistake, 
although M. Loyson advised it to some who, thinking the 
time was not ripe for the reform of clerical celibacy, led 
a double life. The disgust of M. Loyson in regard to 
such priests, for a large part unworthy, together with the 
anti-liberal policy of the Geneva Council of State, led 
him soon to make up his mind to resign his office as Cure 
of Geneva (Aug. 4th, 1874). (He held this office by the 
appointment of the City and Canton of Geneva, which 
shortly before had expelled Mgr., afterwards Cardinal, 
Mermillod, bishop of Geneva. — Tr. ) 



48 A MARRIED PRIEST 

would see drawn around you by threads hid- 
den but solid, thousands not only of disciples but 
co-workers who are looking to you up to now, but 
who, however, are indispensable in order to make 
your effort fruitful and bring it to success. 

Many, in fact, who for divers reasons can not be 
openly and above-board with you would be with you 
in heart and soul from the day when they saw 
clearly that they ran no risk of being drawn by you 
into heresy or schism and could in all conscience 
and in all orthodoxy work with you in preparing 
reforms for the coming Council. 

You would promise to all absolute secrecy as to 
their names and persons, and then I feel that there 
would flow to you a number of adhesions, encour- 
agements, ideas, helps of all sorts, writings that 
you would be asked to publish by those unable to 
do so themselves, etc. Then you might have at 
Geneva a large and attractive newspaper, especially 
when your co-workers would find in it a means of 
support. 

Moreover, I believe that you would win again to 
Catholicism many priests who had become protest- 
ant pastors because they had not then this open 
door and whose return by means of yourself would 
by no means be a trifling success. You would stir 
up also many needed labors; for example, the veri- 
fication and proof of so many important facts, men- 
tioned in Janus, 1 personal inquiries on the state of 
the clergy in regard to celibacy in the different 
nations of the world, especially in South America, 

i Doellinger's book, The Pope and the Council at first 
signed Janus, translated by A. Giraud-Teulon (fils) Paris, 
1869, in 12mo. A new and better edition of this work was 



CATHOLIC REFORM 49 

on the state of the Faith, etc., in the United Greek 
Church, etc., etc. 

Space is lacking and I add only a word more, 
leaving developments to another time. In your 
place, I would abstain from even handling the ques- 
tion of infallibility; it is an ink-well whence every 
one draws as he pleases, and it is indeed useless to 
bother oneself over it. The future free Council 
will decree the way of accepting this point and I 
have no uneasiness about its decision. 

All this is very confused, very incomplete, but 
there are, I think, true ideas, and I ask of God 
that they turn to your good and to that of the 
souls you love, as well as to that of the Gospel and 
the Church, whose minister you wish to continue. 

M. Hyacinthe Loyson attended, as Charles Per- 
raud had foreseen, the Congress of Old Catholics 
at Constance. Not only did he take no part in 
it, but he left in the middle of a session as a sort 
of protest against a speech which was being de- 
livered. 1 

published in 1904 by the same translator under the title 
La PapautS, ses origines au moyen-dge, son influence 
jusqu'en 1870. (Paris, Alcan, in 8mo.) 

i The following note is from the journal of M. Hya- 
cinthe Loyson: 

Sunday, September 14th, 1873. I return from this ses- 
sion, which I was obliged to leave boldly because of the 
injustice and injuries directed against France by that 
rude German deputy (M. Volk, of Augsburg). I left 
with M. de Pressense, who sat near me and shared my in- 
dignation. If the real trouble was, as M. Volk said, the 
dispute between the Germans and the Welsh, I would not 
be here, for I am Welsh, and wish to remain one, but 
while defending my people, I favor not the wars of race. 



50 A MARRIED PRIEST 

A little later, Charles Perraud, writing to his 
friend apropos of his child's birth, brought up 
again the ideas which he had already spun out 
regarding the reform of the Church. 

It was with lively pleasure that I learned that you 
left the meeting of the Congress at Constance when 
that unlucky German spoke improperly of our coun- 
try. 

The little I have been able to learn of that Con- 
gress confirms me in the thought expressed in my 
last letter to you, viz.: that there is no need of 
striving to establish new churches, but to reform 
the Church. 

To this you will answer probably that collective 
action is very hard where there is no positive con- 
stitution. I admit that I believe quite the oppo- 
site if it be well understood that the movement is con- 
fined to something essentially provisional and only to 
tide over the time of an extraordinary crisis and to 
prepare urgent reforms. 1 

This brutal nationalism is pagan; that fellow was full of 
this thought. (Welche, or, as Littre who has it, Velche 
says it is a word given by Germans to Frenchmen and 
Italians — the German form of the Latin Gallas, Gaulois, 
with the suffix sch, sk. Compare Wales. — Tr.) The 
Russian archgeneral Vasilieff, who was near me, said to 
me at the opening of that speech, " It is a disgrace and 
profanation of the movement." 
i Letter of Sept. 28th, 1873. 



V 
THE GREAT DEPRESSION 

1874-1879 

The nomination of Adolphe Perraud at the be- 
ginning of 1874 to the bishopric of Autun 
brought great joy and comfort to Charles. 1 The 
latter thought that, come what might to himself, 
he could not at least any longer injure his well 
beloved brother. But far from beginning a more 
tranquil life, he entered upon a very darkened 
period. 

Stomach troubles were added to his head trou- 
bles. Work was impossible for him. He gave 
up all reading and even correspondence. For 
some years his sole help was the chase, of which 
he was always very fond, now increased because 
of his health. He visited all his friends in the 
country, among whom he could enjoy " the free- 
dom of a gun." But in preaching no longer he 
deprived himself of his resources, and money trou- 
bles following his sickness, together with the anx- 
ieties of the false home, he fell into a very serious 
depression. " Again I should tell you," he wrote 
to M. Hyacinthe Loyson, in the letter of August 
3rd, 1874, from which the above is quoted, " that 

i On the Episcopate of Adolphe Perraud, see a study 
which I made of it in " Eveques et dioceses," First Series. 
51 



52 A MARRIED PRIEST 

if I were a trifle richer, I would prefer, above all 
else, an entire withdrawal from the world, so worn 
out, physically and mentally, am I." 

In 1876 M. Loyson sent to Charles Perraud 
the sermons which he had just delivered and a 
book of the Abbe Chavard upon clerical celibacy. 1 
From the long letter in which Perraud thanked 
his friend of Geneva, the following extracts re- 
veal to us his frame of mind and his state of 
health at that time: 

Paris, July 20, 1876, 
My Dear Friend: 

I would have ere this acknowledged the arrival 
of the two volumes which you sent me, and especially 
to thank you for the promptness with which you 
saw that they were forwarded ; but I desired to know 
your two speeches and to be able to speak of them 
to you. Unfortunately also, all these days my 
habitual headaches are worse and have rendered me 
unfit to read. At last, after I know not how many 
attempts, I made this reading and I begin by telling 

1 " Le Celibat des pretres et ses consequences," by the 
Abbe F. Chavard, Cure of Geneva (Geneve, Benoit, 1874, 
12mo. xviii. 805 p.) The work is preceded by a letter 
of M. Hyacinthe Loyson. He wrote to the author. " I 
congratulate you especially that throughout your study 
you kept within the lines of Catholic orthodoxy. You at- 
tack abuses but you respect the Church. You wish for a 
reform but you would have it Catholic. You know that, 
if the discipline changes, the dogma is unchangeable." 
Later, Chavard brought out another work on the same 
subject, Le Celibat, le pretre, et la femme. (Paris, Gras- 
sart, 8vo., 1894). 



THE GREAT DEPRESSION 53 

you that, taking them all in all, these addresses give 
me the liveliest and most serious satisfaction. 

I already in substance knew that you had from 
the start kept yourself and your cause apart from 
the agitations more shameful than those of ultra- 
montanism. Finally I read with pleasure those 
energetic and eloquent protests which gain 
for you the right and authority necessary for the 
cause of truth. To-day more than at the time I 
wrote you my last letter, I realize clearly that, as 
much as it is a dream to strive to found churches 
and even permanent associations outside of the 
Catholic hierarchy, it is just as useful to have in- 
dependent voices crying out for the needed re- 
forms and to maintain the indispensable " liberty 
in doubtful matters." 

The violent and indeed unheard of oppression 
which weighs down more and more upon those still 
accepting the hierarchy justifies and even necessi- 
tates the temporary and extraordinary mission of 
such men who only withdraw from the hierarchy in 
order not to be wiped out by it. 

With all the reserve demanded by humbleminded- 
ness and common sense, it strikes me that if I were 
in your place I would speak of myself and my 
mission as " the voice of one crying in the 
desert, Prepare ye the way of the Lord." Then, 
no matter that you be alone, provided, however, 
that you strive more and more to be the organ of 
souls innumerable, who while still of the orthodox, 
ultramontane Catholic church think with you and 
like you on a great many points. As I told you 
about two years ago, if I am not mistaken, the 
most important part, although, to be frank, the 



54 A MARRIED PRIEST 

most delicate of your mission would lie in keeping 
up relations, as far as possible, with the souls of 
whom I have just now spoken. This is why I 
insisted and still insist with all my strength that 
you introduce no other changes than those which 
are in conscience indes pens able. Thus Roman 
Catholics will find between themselves and your- 
self the slightest possible differences and diverg- 
encies. It is because of this standpoint, if you 
remember, that I regretted to see you say Mass in 
French rather than in Latin. These changes in 
detail are enough to baffle the faithful and, in fact, 
no other result, good or bad, may be looked for. 

How much I regretted that I could not enjoy 
your company longer. My poor head, which re- 
fuses to allow me to read and write, permits me 
still to understand and reason. 1 

As to the book of the Abbe Ch.(avard), it was 
enough for me to run over it and even that fatigued 
me a great deal. It struck me as interesting, serious, 
useful. If I had known it sooner, I would have 
escaped historical researches which, this winter, 
harmed me much. But this book is unknown and 
it ought to be made known. If I were rich, I 
would send a copy of it to all the priests who I 
might hope would not burn it before reading it. 
I am inclined to think that no one at Paris knows 
of the existence of this book, no more than I did 
myself. This is very regrettable. It strikes me 
also that your works are seen only in shop win- 
dows. I understand very well the difficulty of sell- 

i Here Charles Perraud suggests to M. Loyson a few cor- 
rections of different passages in his speech. 



THE GREAT DEPRESSION 55 

ing such books. Catholic book stores neither will 
nor can sell them, and, in fact, I believe that the 
Protestant do not bother about them. In my 
opinion, it would be better to make them accessible 
to Catholics and leave them with book dealers who 
have no religious bias. 

My respectful regards to Madame. 
I embrace you with all my heart. 

Ch. 

Two months later, Charles Perraud sent again 
to his trusted friend at Geneva the following 
lines : 

How shall I speak to you, my dear friend, I who 
am more broken at heart than in head? Yes, I 
have prayed for you and I will still pray, but I 
ask you again and very earnestly to pray for me. 
Alas ! the growing unfitness for intellectual work 
to which my continual headaches bring me is heart- 
rending from every point of view, for I know not 
for a fact how I will win in the near future our 
daily bread. My situation is always, and in spite 
of myself, a tangle. I begin to think also that my 
one true liberator will be death. Indeed, we are 
born too soon or too late, and I try to console my- 
self in hoping that in a near future the church 
of Jesus Christ will no longer reduce to despair and 
mortal agony souls of good will, upright con- 
sciences, and devout hearts, such as it seems to me 
I have known. . . . 

Here am I in a village where everything is 
noticed, and because of my brother I must subject 
myself to precautions which amount to very little 



56 A MARRIED PRIEST 

as far as I myself am concerned. May God put to 
my credit so many superhuman sacrifices that I 
have always made for this brother, tenderly loved, 
but above all since we — the one and the other — are 
now all one family. 

During my stay with him and without the dis- 
traction of hunting, by means of which I come to 
forget myself, I did wrong here in fatiguing my 
head in his library. I read Le Courayer's preface 
to the translation of the " History of the Council of 
Trent," by Paolo Sarpi. I cannot point out to 
you how much I was struck by the resemblance of 
Le Courayer's ideas and ours, and at once I de- 
termined to let you know of this remarkable work 
in case you knew it not. At the end of the volume 
is a long condemnation of Le Courayer by an 
Archbishop of Toulouse, but my poor head did not 
allow me to read it and verify whether the re- 
proaches against him are deserved. I believe that 
you will easily find it in the public libraries of 
Geneva. I hope ever that God will soon give us a 
chance of seeing you once more and of talking 
thoroughly over matters, as it is impossible for me 
to do so, above all, by letter. 

Always yours from the depth of my heart, and 
my respectful regards also to Madame. 

Charles 

A thing which, as I have already heretofore said, 
that makes X. a hundred times unhappier than you. 
is that he is completely deceived and that, putting 
aside all questions of liberation and so on, he should 
have been a layman and not a priest. Every day 
this becomes clearer to me. 1 

i Letter dated Villequiers (Cher), September 5th, 1876. 



THE GREAT DEPRESSION 57 

In 1877 Pere Hyacinthe wrote vaguely enough 
to Charles Perraud that a priest who had joined 
the Reformed Catholic movement at Geneva and 
had married had returned to the obedience of 
Rome and that his situation had been regularized 
by Mgr. Mermillod, who acted as intermediary. 

Such a very recent case gave some hopes to 
Charles Perraud and Madame Duval arii they 
sought to te get some details " on the subject of 
this exceptional marriage." * Moreover, they 
seemed at this time so much set upon legalizing 
their union that Charles Perraud wished to know 
also " in every case what are the requirements of 
Swiss Civil law in regard to marriage." 2 

Charles Perraud then begged his brother to cite 
at Rome the case in which Mgr. Mermillod inter- 
ested himself, in order to obtain his own secular- 
izing. It was not the first time that he asked 
the bishop of Autun to do him this service. 

Adolphe learned the irregular situation of his 
brother a little after he became a bishop. When 
he first knew of it, he broke off all relations with 
him in the hope of leading him, to break off with 
Madame Duval. Seeing that Charles preferred 
always the other love to that of fraternal, 
he took up again his relations with him and 
used again all his influence to keep him in 

i Letter of Charles Perraud to M. Hyacinthe Loyson, 
July 10th, 1877. 

2 Both in French Law and Canon Law the marriage of 
Charles Perraud and Madame Duval was invalid and il- 
legal.— Tr. 



58 A MARRIED PRIEST 

the Church. One day Charles, unable to stand 
it longer, said to him : " I am going to 
America and no one will hear me spoken of 
again." Adolphe answered : " Then I leave my 
episcopal throne and will go and bury myself 
among the Trappists and no one will hear me 
spoken of again." 

Man j times the bishop assured his brother that 
he had asked of Rome his secularization. 1 He 
surely did so, since he said he did, but we may 
doubt if his requests were strong, and es- 
pecially if he named the priest on whose behalf 
he sought the favor. Did he make new attempts 
in 1877? One fact alone is certain, granting 
that he had: they were no more successful than 
the former. Charles Perraud determined to ex- 
ercise as little as possible his priestly functions. 
The political attitude which the Church adopted 
after May sixteenth caused him extreme displeas- 
ure, and he wished not to take part in electoral 
affairs. 2 

i Testimony of M. Hyacinthe Loyson. 

2 In his letter of July 10th, above quoted (Note 1, p. 
74, book), the Abbe Perraud wrote: " Useless to speak to 
you of politics, our saviors become more and more ridic- 
ulous and at times odious. In particular, have you read 
a passage of the Bulletin des Communes relative to the 
review of July 1st? It strikes me that means more shock- 
ing were never used even under the Empire." Nov. 8th, 
1877, he wrote from Nevers to M. Frederick Passy: 
"My intention is to put off as long as possible my re- 
turn to Paris and probably I will not get there before the 
month of January. The almost steady headaches with 



THE GREAT DEPRESSION 59 

Somewhat later he asked M. Hyacinthe Loyson 
to name for him a confessor who could understand 
his state. He was in want of a confidant to whom 
he might pour out his heart every time he felt 
the need of it. M. Hyacinthe Loyson turned him 
over to the Abbe Cedoz, an old Dominican, chap- 
lain of the English Augustinesses at Neuilly-sur- 
Seine. 

While without any illusion about the origins of 
Christianity and without hope of its future, the 
Abbe Cedoz was among those priests absolutely 
decided to stay in the Church. 1 He influenced 

which I am afflicted make me prefer the sojourn in and 
the liberty of the fields to the life of Paris; and besides, 
I tell you that it would be extremely painful to me amidst 
these political complications to be enrolled, were it only 
by my dress, in a party and a struggle which I have not 
ceased to curse from the very first. In the country, at 
least, for Nevers is rather my headquarters than my reg- 
ular home, every one knows that I always was and am a 
republican." This letter, as is apparent, reechoes the 
disputes which attended the election of October 14th, when 
the voters by a great majority elected the candidates of 
the democratic party. 

(May 16th, 1877, was the turning point in Macmahon's 
regime. It saw the real birth of the Third Republic. — 
Tr.) 

i For the Abbe Cedoz see " La Crise du Clerge," 2nd 
ed. p. 57. At the beginning of 1878, M. Hyacinthe Loy- 
son returned to live in Paris. From that time letters from 
his friend are, of course, but few. But the journal of 
M. Loyson shows that they often saw each other. As a 
sample I give these notes of their friendship. 

Feb. 1, 1878. The poor dear Abbe Ch. Perraud, victim 
of a false system, profoundly discouraged. Read a 
touching letter from his brother, the bishop of Autun. 

June 12th. Emilie (Madame Loyson) visited the Expo- 



60 A MARRIED PRIEST 

very much his new penitent. Directed in this 
fashion and as his advice agreed with the wishes 
that Madame Duval expressed without ceasing to 
Charles Perraud, the latter litle by little grew to 
accustom himself to the notion of carrying his 
yoke until death. 

sition with X. and Z. Dear Father Perraud dined with 
us. 

June 19th. Ch. Perraud at two meals. 

June 23rd. Ch. Perraud dined with us this evening. 
He leaves to-morrow for La Vendee, where he will pass 
some months. The goodness of this soul is as profound 
as his sorrow. Mentem mortalia tangunt. 

July 15th, 1881. This morning had the visit, sweet and 
pleasant, of the excellent Charles Perraud. . . . He 
said to me: "Probably if you were in my place, you 
would have done as I did, as I would have done as you 
did if I had been in your place." He rightly gives the 
good outcome of my marriage to the force of my noble 
companion's character, and to the fact that she is a 
stranger. X. and Z. are not in the same circumstances. 

Oct. 28th. Pleasant visit of Charles Perraud, who 
leaves for Rome with his brother, the bishop of Autun. 
Madame Duval, his wife before God, lives with him in 
his new apartment, Avenue de Breteuil, with the bishop's 
consent. Thus in this detestable system everything is 
double-dealing and false, even among the most strict and 
the best. 



VI 
IN THE PULPIT 

1880-1887 

As long as Charles Perraud remained in the 
church, having only " an aptitude for the 
word, 5 ' * he was obliged to gain his support by 
preaching and not in the usual parochial min- 
istry, in which he would have to perform duties 
unsuitable to his tastes. At the end of 1878 he 
resolved to remount the pulpit, but it was only 
in 1880 that he had recovered the strength, 
physical as well as moral, to take up 
this new departure. The bishop of Autun, with 
whom he was then staying, wished that he would 
give his first sermon dressed as an honorary Canon 
of his cathedral. He conferred upon him this 
dignity. 2 Up to that time Charles had refused 

i December 16th, 1878, Charles Perraud wrote from 
Saint Paul-en-Paredz (Vendee) to M. Hyacinthe Loyson, 
where he was on vacation: "X. wrote me lately that in 
spite of every sort of hindrance which made the task al- 
most impossible, he would soon be forced to reappear in 
public, having only a little aptitude for the word and 
understanding that every other means of gaining a liveli- 
hood was entirely a dream. For myself I know his situ- 
ation in all its aspects, and I think it will be almost a mir- 
acle if X. succeeds in carrying out this scheme." 

2 Semaine religieuse of Autun, August 14th and 21st, 
1880, and Largent in the Life already quoted, p. 43, who 
gives the analysis of this first sermon. 

61 



62 A MARRIED PRIEST 

it, alleging that his health would not permit him 
to work ; but, in fact, because intending to leave 
the clergy, he wanted no distinction, no appoint- 
ment, in order to get away the more readily. 

In 1881 he preached the Lenten sermons at 
Saint Clotilde, a little later the retreat in prepa- 
ration for the first Communion, and at the end 
of the year he began popular conferences in the 
Church of Saint Ambrose in the heart of the 
workingmen's quarter. The Abbe Perraud be- 
lieved that along with the conferences at Notre 
Dame, chiefly addressed to the youth of the 
schools and people of leisure, there was a place 
for a similar series to be delivered to the working 
people. At other times he had preached with 
success at La Rochelle and Rheims sermons spe- 
cially addressed to men. He succeeded with the 
same in Paris. During six years he saw grouped 
around his pulpit a large audience. Later he 
gave his conferences in the more aristocratic 
churches, St. Roch, St. Clotilde, The Madeleine. 1 

If Charles Perraud put aside celibacy, he re- 
mained none the less a sincere Catholic. He 
never wished to know how far historical criticism 
had undermined the thesis of a Christian revela- 
tion. To the Abbe de Meissas, who once at- 
tempted to bring it home to him, he answered, 
" Never could I believe that the faith in which 

i Lenten Stations at the Madeleine (1882 and 1888), at 
La Trinite (1885), at Saint-Roch. (1885 and 1887), Saint 
Clotilde (1886 and 1889). 



IN THE PULPIT 63 

the Abbe Perreyve died was wrong." x He be- 
lieved in the divinity of Jesus Christ, in the divine 
institution of the Church, in the Primacy of the 
Pope. He accepted the dogma of Papal Infal- 
libility, in explaining it thus: As the Vatican 
Council, he held, gave no sufficient explanation 
of the conditions on which a decision should be 
declared irreformable, while another Council 
would have given the necessary details, we remain 
as free as beforehand. 

He thought the Papacy was much disposed to 
exaggerate its own prerogatives and had abused 
them a good deal, but he questioned not the law- 
fulness of its power. Everything in history 
which troubled his so easy-going mind he passed 
by in silence, or managed to give it a twist. It 
was in substance a liberal Catholicism that he 
preached and wished to make acceptable to the 
citizen of to-day. These concessions to contem- 
porary ideals angered the reactionaries. His best 
friends gave up the thought of justifying them. 2 

It is none the less true that they won for him 

i " The Crise du Clerge," 2nd edition, p. 220. 

2Pere Largent admits (pp. 57, 58), "that at times 
Charles Perraud seemed to make extreme concessions." 
Upon " a grave and delicate matter the coercitive power 
of the Church (Inquisition — Tr.) the orator did not ex- 
press himself in a manner sufficiently exact and full." 
Apropos of the possibility of a perfect good faith founded 
on invincible ignorance and the invincible blindness of 
the Atheist and Materialist, the Abb£ Perraud despised, 
according to Largent, the teaching of Father Perrone, 
S, J, 



64 A MARRIED PRIEST 

large and loyal audiences. To understand what 
plays of apologetic strength he wrought, it suf- 
fices to read his conferences upon Christianity and 
individual goodness. This priest, whose whole 
life was poisoned by the law of clerical celibacy, 
pictures the moral and the discipline of this 
Church as the best guaranty of goodness. 

If a man knew how to direct his intelligence to 
think, his heart to love, his virtue to gain another 
soul; if he knew how to say: " No matter the tor- 
rent of criminal pleasures which pass by me, they 
will not drag me into their flow. What I need is 
a soul, a soul in which I can plunge my own for 
ever and aye, a heart which beats in unison with 
mine, a conscience in which I can see myself and 
see God eternally as I see myself and see God in 
my own conscience." If a man could say this, the 
legend of woman's creation would be repeated for 
him, God would bring to him the exquisite creature 
who rose before the first man, and in spite of the 
inevitable sorrows of life he would after a fashion 
reenter the paradise of happiness. 

O you who are on the step of violating your honor, 
remember your soul and the soul that you must re- 
ceive from God. Both are immortal, both are of 
priceless worth, both enjoy a richness that eternity 
will not exhaust. They can therefore find the one 
in the other, a goodness unending. Remember also 
those who will be one day the joy, the honor, the 
incomparable treasure of your hearth. Is there 
anything in this world more beautiful than to see 
souls multiplying around one? Contemplate be- 



IN THE PULPIT 65 

forehand those little hands which are held up to 
you, those looks which go out to you in love, that 
cry of infant weakness which utters : My father ! 
which has need of your care and your labor. Hard 
it is to win by the sweat of the brow the daily 
bread of a whole family. You know it better than 
I, gentlemen. But at even, when the little ones 
smile and embrace you, you soon forget your weari- 
ness. Permit still those souls, all fresh, to beat 
against your heart and you will feel that God is 
within you. 

Will you now say that religion, whose ministers 
we are, contradicts the heart and its love; that our 
piety is without compassion; that lost in dry ab- 
stractions, we have not heated words enough to flay 
the joys of earth and discourage men of good will 
here below? The Apostle Saint Paul preached not 
such hardness of heart ! " Love your wives," said 
he to men, " as Christ loved the Church," and he 
shows how Christ loved this universal society of the 
just, for he did everything to teach them, to spirit- 
ualize them, to bless them, and he spared not even 
his own blood in order to redeem them from evil. 
Behold the love which St. Paul counsels and com- 
mands to men. He could not go further, for Christ, 
who hath loved us even unto death, took care to de- 
clare : " Greater love than this no man hath than 
to lay dawn his life for those he loves." 1 

i " Conferences de Saint Ambroise," 1881, pp. 144-147. 
Pere Largent explains those pages thus: "If, obedient 
to God's appeal, he had renounced for himself the joys, 
severe though sweet, of the domestic hearth, he understood 
them, he guessed at their wholesome charm. He developed 
the married and family life, as he had seen it in his 
dreams, a delightful picture, (supra, p. 64.) 



66 A MARRIED PRIEST 

And after having at length and with warmth 
thus described the family, Perraud regained his 
self-possession. To give the official teaching cf 
the Church or to take from his hearers the too 
human thoughts of a good husband and a good 
father, he went on to " speak of another ideal 
reserved to those privileged souls of whom Jesus 
Christ said: Let him understand who can." * 

Saint Paul, whose beautiful doctrine on Christian 
marriage you have just heard, placed so high the 
sorrowful joys of sacrifice that he feared not to 
say, " I would that you were like myself; but each 
one has his own gift according as he received it 
from God." 2 

There then is the mystery of that superhuman 
love, of that supernatural enthusiasm, which Lacor- 
daire describes in a page — as it were, the reflec- 
tion of his own life: 

" Yes, the priesthood is an immolation of the in- 
dividual added to that of God, and he is called to 
it who feels in his heart the value and beauty of 
souls. Whoever here below recognizes under the 
sad veil which presses and hides us the immortal 
image of God; whoever discerns it, in spite of sin, 
ruin and desolation, such and so dear an object of 
love that he would die for it, such an one carries a 
grand treasure in a fragile vessel. He is of the 
blood which pours itself out to save; he understands 
in some measure, higher than aught else, that sweet 

iMatt. xix. 12. 
2 I Cor. vii. 7. 



IN THE PULPIT 67 

and penetrating word, ' Thou art a Priest for- 
ever/ " * 

No, it is not Christianity, it is materialism which 
closes the door to goodness. On the contrary, 
Christianity opens it to all, it dispenses largely, un- 
iversally, in the broadest meaning of that great 
word, that heavenly blessing which God wishes us to 
have, a glimpse here below in order to put into 
our hearts a more ardent longing for eternal joys. 

In his conferences the Abbe Perraud brushed 
aside every thought of the Church's reform. He 
fancied he was opening the way to it indirectly. 
To accept all progress, silence upon everything 
out of date, symbolical explanation of the Bible, 
disavowal of the Inquisition, of the ancient 
regime, of the teachings of the Syllabus: such 
were the means that he looked upon as destined to 
reconcile the Church and modern society. He 
expected so much from those means because they 
were the only ones he could employ and because 
his friend, M. Hyacinthe Loyson, had stranded 
in his announced attempt at reform. As to the 
latter, in spite of Charles Perraud's views, he con- 
tinued to believe that if all who had desired reform 
had followed himself, the reform would have 
come. 

February 1, 1883, he wrote thus on the mat- 
ter to the preacher at St. Ambrose: 

You know that I have always the best of wishes 
i Panegyric of Blessed Fourier. 



68 A MARRIED PRIEST 

for you and that I desire, without much hope, how- 
ever, to see you, along with your friends, bring about 
a genuine reform in the bosom of the Roman Church. 
The duty of such as think as I do would be to 
follow me courageously upon the dogmatic ground 
of a protest against Papal Infallibility, which is a 
potent error or an absurdity, and upon the moral 
ground of freedom of priests to marry, which either 
in itself or in its results is one of the most urgent 
reforms pressing upon the Church and upon con- 
science. In place of this, they buried themselves 
in silence and in compromises as cheap as they are 
useless and have forsaken me in the superhuman 
strife in which God alone supported me. May God 
forgive them the harm they did to me and to his 
cause without knowing it. As to myself I will 
love them none the less. 

The authority usurped in the Church and before 
her the weak-neckedness of Catholic consciences, 
Liberty corrupted in the State and the shuffling of 
fear and of self-interest on the one hand with 
fanaticism on the other: behold the two evils, op- 
posed and yet alike, under which we suffer and die as 
Catholics and as Frenchmen. Truth and justice 
could alone save us. But neither in the political 
order, any more than in the religious did we find 
truth and justice, whose soldiers, aye, if needful, 
martyrs, we have tried to be. 

If the success of Charles Perraud in the pulpit 
released him from worry over money in bringing 
the means of living to his hearth, they failed not 
to make for him new difficulties. Lady admirers 
regarded it is an honor and mark of esteem to 



IN THE PULPIT 69 

look after his welfare and busy themselves about 
his home. When calling to visit him they saw 
themselves forestalled. They gossiped among 
themselves as to who that stranger was who at 
times opened the door. For a housekeeper she 
seemed unusually anxious about her master. 
Whenever he gave a conference, she came always 
with him in a closed cab and immediately after- 
wards they returned together therein. A jealous 
woman determined to find out the truth. She 
called on an intimate friend of Charles Perraud, 
the Abbe Bernard, Cure of Saint James du Haut- 
Pas, who liked not Madame Duval and in naming 
her somewhat raised the veil over the mystery. 
The name once known, her past was easily traced. 
It amounted to nothing. From that time on 
Charles Perraud had to put up with scenes of jeal- 
ousy on the part of some women and might well 
fear exposure. He wished not, however, to 
change his way of life and preferred to await 
developments. He was well enough esteemed as 
to be denounced neither to the diocesan authority 
nor to public opinion. His secret was not noised 
about. 1 

i This last sentence proves that Charles Perraud's mar- 
riage was an open secret. — Tr. 



VII 
HIS WIFE'S DEATH 

1887 

During the month of February, 1886, Ma- 
dame Duval had a severe attack of pleurisy. The 
following February she had a relapse so serious 
that she was unable to throw it off afterwards. 
On August 19th, M. Hyacinthe Loyson wrote the 
following letter to Charles Perraud, who was 
hesitating between his priestly duties and the 
care he owed his wife. 

In spite of clerical prejudices as well as worldly 
prejudices, you have devoted your life to a great 
and pure love. Both of you might have found in 
this act of heroic courage a more abundant blessing 
of God, a fuller approval of your conscience, a 
peace and a joy of soul which you have but im- 
perfectly tasted. 

God none the less accepts your love and takes 
into account the power of the worldly chains that 
you have not been able to cast off . I implore Him 
with all my soul to preserve her to you, who is in 
truth your wife in His sight, and to give you the 
means to do for her everything that should be done 
in such decisive circumstances. Your labors in 
Paris can be postponed till later, the trip to Pau 
can not. Be my spokesman with the dear invalid, 
and believe always, my dear friend in my full, 
cordial and religious devotedness. In Christo Jesu 
et in £ celesta Christiana Catholica. 
70 



HIS WIFE'S DEATH 71 

They went to Pau, where Madame Duval ex- 
hausted her remaining strength. Charles gave 
her every care and in return she offered him the 
tenderest love. She behaved toward him as to- 
wards a priest. To the very end she addressed 
him as Monsieur l'Abbe, and also as " You." l 
She looked upon herself as a priest's wife and be- 
lieved herself bound to be devout. Daily she said 
the rosary. And when she realized her approach- 
ing end, she determined to receive weekly com- 
munion, which Charles Perraud gave to her. One 
day he said to her, " We have followed our con- 
sciences, but perhaps we were wrong. Do you 
wish to confess to another priest? " " No," she 
answered, sweetly and firmly, " we did well and 
never will I give my confidence to any other priest 
than yourself." Her agony was long, calm and 
full of tenderness for the husband she was leav- 
ing, full of devotion for God before whom she 
was about to stand. When Charles saw that her 
hours were about numbered, he read the litanies 
for a good death from the Diurnal of the Mar- 
chioness of Andelarre. 2 

1 In French li'fe, ordinarily, husband and wife, brother 
and sister, two lovers, address each other in the singular, 
" Thou." The upper classes, however, use in public the 
plural, "You."— Tr. 

2 " Heures choisies ou Recueil de prieres pour tous les 
besoins de la vie," by Claudia, Agathe Jacquot-Rouhier, 
Marchioness of Andelarre. This book was frequently- 
printed at Dijon and Limoges. The first edition appeared 
in 1816. The translation here used is found in many 
American Prayer Books. — Tr. 



72 A MARRIED PRIEST 



LITANY FOR A GOOD DEATH 

O Lord Jesus, God of goodness and Father 
of mercies, I draw nigh to Thee with a contrite 
and humble heart; to Thee I recommend the 
last hour of my life and that judgment which 
awaits me afterwards. 

When my hands, cold and trembling, shall no 
longer be able to clasp the crucifix, and, against 
my will, shall let it fall on my bed of suffering, 
Merciful Jesus, have mercy on me. 

When my eyes, dim and troubled at the ap- 
proach of death, shall fix themselves on Thee, 
my last and only support, Merciful Jesus, have 
mercy on me. 

When my lips, pale and trembling, shall pro- 
nounce for the last time Thine adorable name, 
Merciful Jesus, have mercy on me. 

When my cheeks, pale and livid, shall inspire 
the beholders with pity and dismay, Merciful 
Jesus, have mercy on me. 

When my hair, bathed in the sweat of death 
and stiffening on my head, shall forbode mine 
approaching end, Merciful Jesus, have mercy 
on me. 

When my ears, soon to be forever shut to 
the discourse of men, shall be open to that irrev- 
ocable decree which is to fix my doom for eter- 
nity, Merciful Jesus, have mercy on me. 

When my feet, benumbed with death, shall ad- 
monish me that my mortal course is drawing to 
an end, Merciful Jesus, have mercy on me. 



HIS WIFE'S DEATH 73 

When my imagination, agitated by dreadful 
spectres, shall be sunk in an abyss of anguish; 
when my soul, affrighted with the sight of my 
iniquities and the terrors of Thy judgments, 
shall have to fight against the angel of darkness, 
who will endeavor to conceal Thy mercies from 
mine eyes and plunge me into despair, Merciful 
Jesus, have mercy on me. 

When my poor heart, oppressed with suffer- 
ing and exhausted by its continual struggles with 
the enemies of its salvation, shall feel the pangs 
of death, Merciful Jesus, have mercy on me. 

W T hen my parents and friends, surrounding 
my bed, shall be moved with compassion for me 
and invoke Thy clemency in my behalf, Merci- 
ful Jesus, have mercy on me. 

When I shall have lost the use of my senses, 
when the world shall have vanished from my 
sight, when mine agonizing soul shall feel the 
pangs of death, Merciful Jesus, have mercy on 
me. 

When my last sighs shall force my soul from 
my body, accept them as sighs of a loving im- 
patience to come to thee, Merciful Jesus, have 
mercy on me. 

When the last tear, the forerunner of my dis- 
solution, shall drop from mine eyes, receive it as 
a sacrifice of expiation for my sins; grant that 
I may expire the victim of penance; and then, 
in that dreadful moment, Merciful Jesus, have 
mercy on me. 

When my soul, trembling on my lips, shall bid 



74 A MARRIED PRIEST 



farewell to the world and leave my body lifeless, 
pale and cold, receive this separation as a hom- 
age which I willingly pay to Thy divine maj- 
esty, and in that last moment of my mortal life, 
Merciful Jesus, have mercy on me. 

When at length my soul, admitted to Thy 
presence, shall first behold the splendor of Thy 
Majesty, reject it not, but receive it into Thy 
bosom, where I may forever sing Thy praises; 
and in that moment when eternity shall begin for 
me, Merciful Jesus, have mercy on me. 



When Madame Duval had breathed forth her 
last sigh, the Abbe closed her eyes. He brought 
the body to Paris to be buried in the tomb which 
she had prepared and to which she had trans- 
ferred the corpse of her dearly beloved child. 1 

i Madame Duval died Monday, Dec. 19th, 1887. M. 
Loyson's journal has notes of two letters received from 
his friend during his sad days at Pau: 

November 22nd. Heart-breaking letter from the Abbe" 
Charles Perraud (Pau, 18, rue Henri IV.), who sees his 
companion, Mme. Duval, dying amid frightful pains but 
in sublime resignation. 

December 23rd. " My dear holy martyr went to heaven 
Monday evening at 11.30." Letter of the Abbe Charles 
Perraud. 

The details of Madame Perraud's death were told by 
Charles Perraud to M. and Mme. Hyacinthe Loyson while 
on a visit to them. M. Loyson has thus recorded it in his 
journal: 

March 6th, 1888. Nice visit from the Abbe Perraud. 
He is a great soul, a very holy soul of the New Church 



HIS WIFE'S DEATH 75 

although in the net of the Old Church. In tears he nar- 
rated to us the long and noble agony of his companion, 
his wife before God, Mme. Duval. It was he himself 
who heard her confession, gave her weekly communion, 
recited along with her the thrilling litanies for a good 
death out of the book of Devotions of the Marchioness 
d'Andelarre, closed her eyes and brought back her corpse 
to Paris. He hopes to rejoin her soon, but wishes him- 
self to become holier before dying. 

Mme. Duval was buried Dec. 24th, 1887, in Montpar- 
nasse Cemetery. Her grave is No. 12 East, 9th Division, 
9th row North. The grave stone carries the following 
simple inscription: 

Raymond Duval, 
Concession a perpetuite 
No. 816. 
1875. 
(Raymond was her family name: Rosalie Eugenie Ray- 
mond.— Tr.) 



VIII 
ALONE 

1888-1892 

Charles Perraud's life was broken. He had 
but one wish, — to rejoin her whom he had lost, 
and to make good use of the time to be given him 
by God " in order to become holier." To Ma- 
dame Loyson, who in the summer of 1888, in 
order to soften his grief, invited him to go with 
her husband and herself to the waters at Mont- 
Dore, he answered sorrowfully: 

Autun, July 23rd, 1888. 

Dear Madam: 

Your loving kindness touched me; as also your 
sympathy, which can never be overdone. If I 
dared, I would add that I thank God for the bitter- 
ness of my sorrow and would ask of Him to in- 
crease rather than lessen it, even to my last 
breath. 

Is it not a grace, foreordained perhaps for my 
salvation, to feel myself more dead than alive while 
retaining, however, enough strength, physical and 
moral, to attempt something while Providence will 
leave me in this sad world. Oh, not that I would 
not desire to be again at Mont-Dore: there I would 
once more find too many heartbreaking recollections. 
But both of you be assured that my thoughts and 
my prayers are with you. I hope our friend will 
take the treatment rather as a precaution than from 

76 



ALONE 77 

any need. You will send me news of him, will you 
not, while ever asking him to pray much for me? 
Here I will spend nearly all my vacation. Courage 
is wanting to lead me, as of old, into circles where I 
should meet pleasure and fun. 

Here at least I enjoy comparative solitude and a 
kind of monastic life which accords better with the 
longings and needs of a broken heart. 

Believe always, dear Madame, in my respectful 
and sincere affection. Charles Perraud 

From this time on the Abbe Perraud's way of 
preaching underwent a noteworthy change. Up 
to now he had willingly given his efforts to con- 
ferences ; hereafter he devoted himself less to per- 
suading his hearers to lead a Christian life than to 
console them, or rather console himself along with 
them in life's sorrows. Next to having been a 
good lecturer, he excelled in homily. He loved 
to explain, in a sentimental way, the Gospel or 
to comment upon a Gospel parable or miracle. 
The unction with which he spoke won hearts. 
He composed also a small, touching work, " Med- 
itations on the Seven Words of Our Lord Jesus 
Christ upon the Cross," which was brought out 
in 1890. 1 

He gave it this dedication: 

TO THE MEMORY OF 

THE DEAR SOULS 

WHO WAIT WITH ME BEFORE GOD. 

i Paris: Librairie Tequi, and the 8th in 1907, by the 
same house. 



78 A MARRIED PRIEST 

This book is his masterpiece, the testament of 
an entire life of desolation. In July, 1873, 
Charles Perraud wrote, " Why does God allow 
lives where a dreadful sorrow keeps on daily 
growing, until the day comes when it kills ? " * 
How often, during so many years, did not this 
sad question take hold of him who wrote the fol- 
lowing meditation: 

Oh, dreadful pain to ever ask why, and never re- 
ceive an answer! At least when the babe repeats 
this word coming constantly to his lips, he says it 
sweetly because the loving answers of father or 
mother give him the joy of finding something new 
and of surprise thereat. Now I, who am but a 
child and without any one in whom I can confide; 
I turn over and over again in my mind those un- 
solvable problems, and when I force myself to read, 
study, compare, I see no more clearly than before; 
and even in my dreams or my sleep, which wearies 
me, I am chased by the eternal Why. 

Oh, yes, why is there so much useless, undeserved 
suffering upon earth? Why do some die of hun- 
ger, while others rejoice in the fulness of wealth and 
the splendor of luxury? Why are there blind-born, 
deaf-mutes, lepers, paralytics? Why are innocent 
souls tortured throughout life with hideous wounds? 
Why mothers who kill their offspring, and sons who 
murder their fathers? 

Why this fury of lust firing our veins, which 
burns up our blood and butchers us as well as 

iSee Chapter III., p. 25. 



ALONE 79 

enervates us, and which, under the deceitful name 
of love, multiplies the crimes of mankind? 

To escape from soul torments, I shut out every 
book, I enter a church, I cast myself upon my 
knees with all the faithful and I try to unite my- 
self to their prayers in order to believe, love and 
worship like them. And lo! my spirit, in spite of 
me, goes forth and carries me far from the Temple 
wherein I had sought a refuge and from the altar 
where I had hoped to recognize and feel God's 
presence. 

The book, read yesterday, again comes up be- 
fore me importunate, without pity, hateful, but 
rushing in and overpowering, to murmur objections 
into my ears, dreadful Whys that stop the prayer 
upon my lips and choke off my worship. How- 
ever, I open the Gospel, which I carry about with 
me, and by divine permission, by divine chance, my 
eyes fall upon a page of the Passion. I love that 
story of dying sorrow, and when I come to the cry 
of anguish, " My God, My God, why hast Thou 
forsaken Me? " it seems that my troubles cease, and 
seeing Christ sharing in my sufferings I grow calm- 
er near his cross, around which, as in our two souls, 
profound darkness is falling. 

If the Light was shut out from the eyes of Him 
who said, " I am the Light of the World," and if 
he asked "Why?" without receiving any answer, 
how can a weak man like me not have his hours of 
darkness and his days of gloom? Let us, then, use 
our reason and labor to have a grain of philosophy 
and our own trials will not plunge us into this dread, 
and the sufferings of mankind will not lead us to 



80 A MARRIED PRIEST 

doubt of the goodness of God. We long to know 
the wherefore of all things; it is a longing inherent 
in the nature of our minds, anxious for truth; it is 
a need of our hearts, which injustice revolts and 
sufferings shock. 

But if the meaning of details is lacking, have 
we not the general source of all explanations? Do 
not reason and faith tell us that God is sovereignly 
wise and infinitely good ? If all the mysteries were 
unveiled, what merit should we have in believing 
and should we not lose the blessedness promised 
by Jesus Christ to those who believe and see not? 
It is not in the time of trial but in the day of 
reward that to our vanished sight will appear the 
harmony of the divine plan, the providential rea- 
sons of our sorrows, the evidence, the splendor, the 
brightness of Infinite Goodness. The human heart 
has sorrow still more cruel than the sufferings of 
the mind. 

I will not attempt to enumerate these here, or 
even to give an idea of them. Who is the man who, 
at certain times of his life and quite often perhaps, 
has not in tears repeated the cry, so touching, of the 
priest at the foot of the altar: " O my Soul, why 
art thou sad and why troublest thou me ? " 

In the outbursts of my sorrow I cry for help and 
no one answers. In heaven no one hears me, and on 
earth none comes to my aid. 

Despite my prayers, sorrow physical or moral, 
accomplishes in me its pitiless work. Things and 
events follow their courses and nature's inexorable 
laws over-ride me without hearing my groans or 
seeing my tears. Nowhere does God show Him- 
self or step in when His creature in distress calls 



ALONE 81 

upon Him. Is he deaf and pitiless? If he hears 
me, why does he not deliver me? If He hears me 
not, can we say that He exists? 

Everything goes against my wishes and my 
hopes. I wished to do good and I did evil. I 
sought goodness and it fled from me. The soul 
whom I loved Death has snatched from me. It was 
the child of my love. Yesterday he filled every- 
thing with his shouts of joy, and at evening I gazed 
upon him with rapture when he slept in his cradle. 
To-day his large open eyes see me not, no breath 
issues from his lips, and to-morrow this masterpiece 
of beauty, this wonder of grace, must be thrown, 
like vile carrion, to the worms of the tomb. Where 
is the priest who has not heard from the lips of 
unhappy unfortunates of every sort that heartbreak- 
ing word: " But you see indeed how Providence 
abandons me." 

I built my life and rested my future upon a love 
approved of God and suddenly, without reason and 
against all reason, without justice and against all 
justice, the edifice of my goodness goes to pieces. 
My joy is gone, the light is vanished from my view, 
my soul has lost its soul, and I remain alone in a 
world without sunshine, in an atmosphere where I 
breathe no longer. 

It is a summary of all those despairs which Jesus 
gathered together in that time whose length is un- 
known but which has lasted long enough to bring 
home the unspeakable sorrow of supreme desola- 
tion. He wished to taste by himself what the poor 
human creature suffers that no longer sees any- 
thing, no longer knows anything, no longer be- 
lieves in anything, no longer confides in any one, 



82 A MARRIED PRIEST 

and never again looks for remedy or comfort or 
consolation. 

He desired to try even that frightful despair 
which takes hold of a man when trapped, if the 
expression is permissible, by everything surrounding 
him; he withdraws into himself in a gloomy sad- 
ness, in an insurmountable and complete disgust. 
What say I? In sorrow and disgust. At times a 
sort of bitter rage follows and then man, writhing 
in his sorrow, turns against God and in his folly 
seeks to find comfort in blaspheming. 

Jesus wished to give out this cry because realiz- 
ing how many unfortunates would not be able to 
keep it from their lips; he excused in advance their 
despair by lamenting like them. 

O dearly beloved Savior, your voice will mount 
higher than that of the despairing souls; even to 
the end of time it will shield the sad reecho of 
the murmurs and curses which excess of sorrow pro- 
vokes too often from our weakness ; it will be as the 
shield of human blasphemy. 

To know the souls of those in despair and to be 
able to win them for yourself and save them, you 
wished to be like unto them and become their equal 
in misery; to withdraw them from the abyss, you 
courageously descended with them. 1 

The Abbe Perraud had planned to write as a 
sequel to the " Meditations on the Seven Words " 
a work which would be called " Words of Eternal 
Life." In it he intended to comment upon all 
the words of the Savior regarding Heaven, ex- 

iIV. Meditation on the word: "My God, My God, 
why hast thou forsaken me? " pp. 111-120. 



ALONE 83 

plaining them from the teaching of the great the- 
ologians. The problems of the future life pos- 
sessed for him a mysterious attraction ; and when 
he was held up by some difficulty in which the 
theologian seemed to be lacking, " Surely," he 
would say, with his sweet smile, " I shall have to 
go there myself in order to understand." l 

A great source of comfort, a renowned preach- 
er, a director much sought after, Charles Per- 
raud was at that time loaded with stipends and 
presents. The fortune which he no longer needed 
he gave to a work for a long time dear to him, 
viz. : the work devoted to the comfort of those 
born in sorrow and without hope of remedy, 
loaded with sorrow for the whole of life, incurable 
children. 2 

1 Lacroix, as above, p. 21. 

2 Charles Perraud's friends declare that by his public 
sermons and private begging he secured more than 400,000 
francs for the Home of Incurables, rue Lecourbe. He 
was president of the Ladies' Committee, and whenever he 
was going to speak in favor of this charity he loved to 
pass an entire day among those helpless children in order 
to fill himself with his subject. On leaving he would say, 
" This house is truly a paradise of sorrow." Lacroix, as 
above, p. 14. 

For the history of the Home, rue Lecourbe, see Maxime 
du Camp, " La charite privee a Paris," chapter on Scrofu- 
lous Children. 



IX 
DEATH 

1892 

At the opening of 1892 Charles Perraud was 
stricken with pneumonia. The attack frightened 
all his friends and soon shattered their hopes. 
On January 10th the bishop of Autun was by his 
bedside and left it no more until the end. Jan- 
uary 13th, the sixty-first year of his age, the dy- 
ing man, in spite of a slightly apparent improve- 
ment, wished to receive from his brother the last 
sacraments. " It is an example," he said. " It 
is at least fit that we ourselves do what we teach 
the faithful." x 

After that day he received Communion more 
than once. Some chosen friends took turns in 
the sick man's bedroom or parlor. Others came 
daily, and even often during the day, to ask for 
news. Charles Perraud received all and said his 
farewells to all, thus carrying out the programme 
he seemed to have drawn in the last of the " Med- 
itations on the Seven Words." 

Wait not to say farewell to them whom you leave 
and to salute those who on high await you, or till 
your poor body wears itself out in its last convul- 

i Lacroix, p. 30. 

84 



DEATH 85 

sions and the final tortures of its agony. Wait not 
until all your strength is gone and your exhausted 
body drags your soul along with itself into an irre- 
sistible and unconquerable sleep. On the contrary, 
those who see death coming should always be the 
first to break that sad, dismal, decisive silence which 
too often surrounds and darkens the hour which 
Light eternal should have already illumined. 

Is it not to him who is the highest in dignity 
that belongs the word first of all? 

Does it not belong to the superior to instruct his 
subj ects ? 

Now whatever be the inequality of conditions and 
difference even of ages in the death-chamber, it 
is the dying man who has the first place. 

Find not they who die like Jesus Christ, for the 
comfort and encouragement of those whom they 
leave, a penetration, a power of voice, at times even 
a majesty, which astonishes and overcomes? 

Then on the threshold of Eternity, the soul which 
" sees God from death's other side " notices the 
earth with its joys and its sorrows only as a hazy 
point. 

It hears no longer the noise of the crowd or the 
buzz of conversation or earthly affairs. It gives its 
attention only to the mysterious and pressing ap- 
peals of the Spouse who is coming to invite it to 
sit at the eternal banquet. 1 

Sunday morning, January 17th, Charles Per- 
raud gave to Pere Largent his farewells and last 

i Meditations sur les sept paroles: Seventh Meditation: 
Filial abandonment into the Divine hands, pp. 211-313. 



86 A MARRIED PRIEST 

requests : "I believe," he said, in a hesitating 
voice, " that I will not recover. In spite of my 
sins I die with an unfailing confidence in God's 
mercy. Often men are thought better than they 
really are and no one prays for such. For a 
long while we have loved one another. Pray for 
me and for my part, if God, as I trust, be merci- 
ful to me, I will pray for you. I am going to 
bless you and together with you Pere Lescoeur 
and the entire Oratory." 

He blessed him. Pere Largent kissed the dy- 
ing man's hands and forehead and then with- 
drew. 

January 18th, about five o'clock in the even- 
ing, Pere Largent returned. The bishop of 
Autun met him and said : " Let us now pray, 
for the time is shortening. His agony begins." 
Pere Largent took and kissed the hand of Charles 
Perraud, who blessed him in silence. 

The last hours of the closing day of the dying 
man have been told by the Abbe Planus, Secretary 
of the bishop of Autun, who attended the prelate. 

" The coming stroke was visibly evident. To- 
wards midday his breathing, short, jerky, audi- 
ble, seemed to portend the beginning of the end. 
A calm followed. The dying man grew weary 
thus to be brought back, as he was about to reach 
the end. He was weary, but he lost nothing 
either of his mind's brightness or his courageous 
firmness. We may say that he kept his faculties 
to the end — he was master of himself. To the 



DEATH 87 

end he blessed his friends. Yes, doubtless also 
the little ones, the humble, especially the poor, — 
his old servant, a boy of the neighborhood who 
had waited upon him, and the janitor. ' To 
preach to the poor he sent me. Evcmgelizare 
pawperibus misit me, 9 " 

When it was seen that the end was at hand, the 
bishop said the liturgical prayers " for a soul in 
agony." Then Charles asked him to read in a 
high voice the Litanies of a Good Death from the 
Diurnal of the Marchioness of Andelarre which 
he had kept as a relic. 

" The sick man," says M. Planus, " listened 
carefully to every word, for he himself had whis- 
pered them to the dying. Not having strength 
enough to answer, ' Merciful Jesus, be merciful 
to me,' he was content at every aspiration to 
touch the crucifix to his lips and kiss it. The 
bishop suggested to his brother pious thoughts 
and aspirations, which were mainly scriptural. 
At the last moment he repeated for him the cry 
of St. John in the Apocalypse, XXII, 20, 
4 Come, Lord Jesus,'- — the supreme cry which 
marked the close of divine revelations and with 
which should end the Christian life." 

The bishop spoke again to the dying man, 
" My dear child, our mother brought you into 
the world for the present life, and myself, I will 
not leave you until you have entered the portals 
of Eternity." 

" Yes," answered the dying man in a weak 



88 A MARRIED PRIEST 

voice. Two or three breaths slower and weaker 
followed, and then all was over. 1 

Charles Perraud wished the Gospel which he 
had constantly used to be placed in the coffin 
upon his breast. He drew up the details of his 
funeral in his last will, as follows: 

1 declare my express wish that at my funeral 
service, only such as a Little Sister of the Poor has, 
shall be carried out. My universal legatee and the 
executor of my Will will pay to the Cure of the 
parish a sum equal to the cost of a first-class fu- 
neral, the same to be given to the poor. In the 
most formal way I forbid any flowers or crowns to 
be placed upon my death-bed or my bier in the 
church." 2 

His wishes were carried out. 

On Wednesday, January 20th, at his own par- 
ish church of Saint Pierre-du-Gros-Caillou, the 
corpse rested between four candles upon the bier 
used for the poor. Chants there were, but the 
singers were the little incurables of the rue Le- 
courbe, — poor children, blind, weak, crippled, 
whose great number filled the side aisles. The 
large gathering gave proof of the love and sym- 
pathy which the dead man inspired. Besides the 
dignitaries of the church, there were present Mar- 
shal MacMahon, former President of the Repub- 

iLacroix, p. 4. 

2 He died January 18th, about 5 o'clock in the evening. 



DEATH 89 

lie, Duke Albert de Broglie, Camille Rousset, Sul- 
ly-Prudhomme, Count d'Haussonville, Viscount 
de Vogue, all of the French Academy; Henry 
Wallon, Life Secretary of the Academy of In- 
scriptions and Belles-Lettres ; Mons. Georges Pi- 
cot, of the Academy of Moral and Political 
Sciences; August Nisard, Mons. Henry Schnei- 
der, Mons. de Lamarzelle, Senator Adrian Heb- 
rard, many men and women of society, many 
youths who had frequented the churches where 
he preached. 

On leaving the church, en route to the ceme- 
tery of Mont Parnasse, the bishop of Autun, who 
had conducted the services, turning around cast 
over the long and distinguished procession a sat- 
isfied eye. 1 

That same day M. Hyacinthe Loyson, who was 
unwell, wrote in his journal: 

20th, — 11 A. M. At this hour the body of my 
poor friend leaves the church for the cemetery. I 
was too much in pain to be present at the funeral. 
A sun, reddish and rayless, cast at the moment a 
very sweet and sad glimmer upon his bier. A soul 
upright, pure, but weak, who had not the courage to 
take part with me. 

And he sent to the bishop of Autun the fol- 
lowing note: 

i This fact was related to me by an eye witness, friend 
and follower of the dead man. Charles Perraud was 
burried in the same tomb as his father and mother, south 
section, grave No. 2, West, line 4th south, 12th division. 



90 A MARRIED PRIEST 

The blow which strikes you so cruelly, Mon- 
seigneur, strikes me also, and very sorrowfully. I 
retain for you my esteem and my sympathy, but 
the dear dead one remains for me the friend of other 
days. 

We suffered the same abuses, we shared the same 
regrets and the same desires, and as he said to me 
not so long ago, we were indeed " of the same 
church." 

I myself, who to the end had his confidence, can 
say that he was not merely a just man, but a mar- 
tyr. 

Detained by an illness which might take a serious 
turn, I could not assist to-day at his funeral. I 
wish to say to you that in mind, in heart, in prayer, 
I was, and am one with you as with him. 



CONCLUSION 

1892-1894 

Twice after the death of Charles Perraud, M. 
Hyacinthe Loyson asked the bishop of Autun 
to kindly return to him the documents which he 
had formerly entrusted to him, as also the letters 
he had written. The bishop answered thus: 

Paris, 13 Avenue Duquesne, 

January 25, 1892. 
Monsieur: 

Hardly yet have I been able to begin to take 
up the sad material details which result from that 
sorrowful separation. However, after receiving 
your two letters I made a search which gave no re- 
sult. My brother was little of a collector and habit- 
ually destroyed the letters which he had answered. 
Be assured that if further search lead me to find the 
documents you wrote to me about I will forward 
them to you speedily in return for the letters from 
him now in your hands. 

To this answer called forth by your request, 
kindly be not offended if I add a few lines. These, 
I fancy, were dictated to me by him whose supreme 
immolation I witnessed and sustained for nine days. 
He had the grace of a death, admirable before men 
and, as I have the consoling hope, precious in God's 
sight. His most tender and most merciful soul 
91 



92 A MARRIED PRIEST 

pitied the situation, so sad, in which you have been 
for more than twenty years, which brought the 
Church, your mother, to shed so many tears, as have 
also so many friends, known and unknown. But 
her charity so compassionate could not blind her to 
the rights of all-pervading truth! Oh! could those 
voices from beyond the tomb, of our dear friend, 
Perreyve, Gratry and his own — those voices which 
speak not the language of earth's brawls and dis- 
putes — be heard in your soul before that final com- 
bat in the agony and the supreme crisis of death, 
when he found it so good — as St. Theresa put it 
— of being able to rest upon the bosom of the 
Church, the deposit and channel of infinite mercy. 

Receive, monsieur, the expression of the very sin- 
cere sentiments which the charity of Jesus Christ 
inspires me for you. 

Adolphe-Louis, 
Bishop of Autun. 

At the time he received this letter, M. Hya- 
cinthe Loyson was suffering from a swelling 
which had taken on all at once a dangerous de- 
velopment and which called for an operation. He 
could not then answer. Madame Loyson did so. 
She called to the bishop's notice how his brother, 
the Abbe Perreyve, and the Pere Gratry were a 
poor choice to upbraid more or less directly Pere 
Hyacinthe with his open and legal marriage. 1 

1 On learning that Pere Hyacinthe Loyson would pass 
the winter of 1896-97 in Rome with his family, Leo XIII 
wished to take advantage of his presence to regain to the 
Church the great preacher. The Pope sent Prince Bal- 



CONCLUSION 93 

The Abbe Charles had contracted a secret mar- 
riage. Perreyve died in despair. As to Pere 
Gratry, during the years 1870-71, that is, short- 
ly before his death, he had shown a great affec- 
tion for a lady whom the bishop of Autun knew 
well and this affection would have wound up in 
marriage if the said lady had consented to it. 1 
The bishop answered in the following note : 

Sunday, February 7th, 1892. 

Madame E. Hyac. Loyson will not be surprised, 
I think, if I simply acknowledge the reception of 
the registered letter which came to hand this morn- 
ing. To answer it would be a task too cruel and, 
moreover, entirely useless. All that is past is left 
to God's justice and mercy, upon which I confide 
and depend. 

In spite of all the search — the most minute — 
I have found no documents that M. H. L. asked 
of me just after the death of my brother. 

In case he would find it apropos, I would thank 
him to return to me the latter's letters. I will still 
be all the week in Paris at 52 Boulevard Male- 

tassare Odescalchi and the Capuchin friar, who is now 
Cardinal Vives y Tuto. To Pere Hyacinthe they offered 
permission to take up again the priestly functions, while 
retaining his wife and son on the sole condition that he 
accept Papal Infallibility. In order to legitimize the 
marriage the Pope proposed to affiliate Pere Hyacinthe to 
an Oriental Church, whose priests are married. A per- 
sonal friend said : " Sign everything, sign without even 
reading. These are formulas of the Church and formulas 
are only formulas." Pere Hyacinthe refused. (Houtin, 
Le Crise du Clerge, 2nd Edition, p. 99. — Tr.). 
i This lady was still living, September 1st, 1909. — Tr. 



94 A MARRIED PRIEST 

sherbes. I learned with sorrow from the newspaper 
of the painful and dangerous operation he under- 
went. I express to him, as also to yourself, 
Madame, my best wishes. 1 

M. Hyacinthe Loyson replied not and kept his 
friend's letters. So the bit of a sermon that the 
bishop of Autun took upon himself to give to his 
brother's correspondent kept him from securing 
curious documents, which he would have surely 
destroyed. 

A few days later M. Hyacinthe Loyson sent 
the following reply: 

February 11th. 
Monsignor: 

In some measure am I now able to resume my 
correspondence. One of my first thoughts is of 
you; but upon reading your letter and its answer to 
Madame Loyson, I have nothing to add. It is clear 
that you are but poorly in touch with affairs. 

The life of your brother I knew in detail. I 
refer to his real life, the life he passed through amid 
sufferings, not that of the conventional, pious ro- 
mance, which perhaps may be supplied as a substi- 
tute. I did not approve all of it, but I understood 
the whole of it: I add even that in a way I re- 
spected it. That life is in my eyes one of the most 

i The letter is unsigned. The address was, Mme. Emilie 
Hyac. Loyson, Neuilly (Seine), 29 Boulevard Inkermann. 
In his journal, M. Loyson notes thus how he received this 
letter : " Fine answer of the bishop of Autun. One of 
the most painful afflictions of my life was separation from 
such men. The higher claims of truth exacted it." 



CONCLUSION 95 

touching and most sorrowful pages of contempo- 
rary church history. 

The dear dead one's letters have ever been too 
dear to me to be parted with. You appeal to my 
conscience and to death. My conscience is at peace 
and I have just faced death. The great fault of 
the Roman Church is to put itself above the truth. 
The lawful role and true dignity of authority is to 
serve truth, not to be served by it. 

The church, out of which there is no salvation, 
is not that which kisses the cross of Jesus Christ 
upon the Pope's slipper, but the church truly cath- 
olic, the church universal, the spouse of the Saviour, 
the congregation of the saints. Beyond Jesus 
Christ, knowingly and freely rejected, there is no 
salvation. 

May God grant you to see this light, in which I 
am confident that we shall meet each other, if not 
on this side of death, at least on the other, whither- 
ward has preceded us your brother and my friend. 

Hyacinthe Loyson, 

Priest. 

During September, 1894, M. Hyacinthe Loy- 
son re-read Charles Perraud's letters. He was so 
moved by them that he could not keep from send- 
ing to the bishop of Autun the following note, of 
which his journal has kept a copy: 

September 15th, 1894. 

MONSEIGNEUR AND OLD FRIEND : 

I re-read the letters of your dear and unhappy 
brother. In that which he wrote me on June 1st, 
1878, the eve of a conference at the Cirque d'hiver, 



96 A MARRIED PRIEST 

delivered by him in lay dress, he said to me: 
" Courage; all the same, dear friend, say what you 
think without fear of anything whatsoever; there 
lies your soul's strength, your true honor, and take 
for your motto : * Si Deus pro nobis, quis contra 
nos ? ' It is necessary in the time in which we are 
to have almost the whole world against oneself in 
order to be in the truth." 1 

In other letters he speaks to me in a manner, at 
once touching and heartbreaking, of her whom he 
loved, Madame Duval, to whom he was secretly mar- 
ried and whom he himself assisted at her death at 
Pau. 

I could never approve the secretness of that union, 
but I had for them a sad respect, for force lacked 
both the one and the other to act as their duty 
demanded openly before God and man. 

You can not be completely ignorant of those 
things, Monseigneur, and this is why you strangely 
misunderstood me when, to bring me back to the 
system of falsehood and slavery which made a long 
and painful martyr of your brother and my friend, 
you quote me his example, and at the same time 
those equally objectionable of Pere Gratry and the 
Abbe Perreyve. 

O God! When will be torn aside those veils that 
hide the truth of history in the Church of to-day 
as in that of heretofore. 

You are wrong, Monseigneur, in placing at the 
service of such a system your nobleness of character, 

i The original of this letter still exists. I did not quote 
it above in its proper place because to me it seemed not 
to fall in with the narrative. 



CONCLUSION 97 

your talent with the word and the pen. You volun- 
tarily blind yourself, in order to declare afterwards 
that such is the joyful and holy freedom which 
Jesus Christ purchased for us and such the Kingdom 
of God that he established upon earth. Judaism was 
better worth. 

By return of post the bishop answered. His 
letter, to-day lost or mislaid, touched M. Hya- 
cinthe Loyson, who made this reply : 

September 17th, 1894. 

MONSEIGNEUR AND OLD FRIEND! 

I wished not to re-open your wound, but the read- 
ing of the letter I referred to has more than once, 
and indeed cruelly also, recalled my own. Behold 
why, in a moment of profound anger that I could 
not master, I wrote you the lines of which you com- 
plain: 

My indignation was not against your brother, who 
was one of my best friends. For him I had only 
affection, respect, pity. It was directed against a 
system among whose leaders you are one of the 
most eminent, and of which he was one of the most 
lamentable victims, a system which killed him after 
having forced his soul — one of the most upright I 
ever knew — into deeds in no wise upright. 

I reminded you of his marriage. But how could 
I add of his acceptance of Papal Infallibility, such 
as he himself explained it to me, after he was 
created an honorary Canon of Autun : " The Pope 
is infallible when he speaks ex cathedra, but we 
lack the criterion to discern when he speaks in that 



98 A MARRIED PRIEST 

way." When, after the death of his former con- 
fessor, he looked for another who could understand 
and accept his state of soul, it was I who suggested 
to him Pere Cedoz. 

I saw not your brother in his last illness, and my 
wife, who was a friend of his, received him in my 
absence when he paid us a visit a little while before. 
Doubtless the sharp crisis which he had undergone 
had passed off, but there was nothing to show me 
that he had changed his way of seeing and feeling. 

Console yourself, however, Monseigneur, for God 
— the true God, not the idol — in order to receive 
souls unto the fulness of his light and his love, de- 
mands not the strange conditions that you suppose 
and that can be summed up in the casting down of 
reason and of conscience at the feet of a false, 
abusive human authority. 

There, on the contrary, lies the chief error and 
the great crime of Roman Catholicism, and it is in 
striking them with the double edged sword that it 
kills souls, whether those it drives from God or those 
it subj ects to man. 

Be well assured, Monseigneur, that I wished not 
to cause you pain. I fancied that you would un- 
derstand the truth perhaps some day and accept it. 
At all events, I thought it a duty to say these things 
to you. 

Such are the documents which have led to the 
writing of this sketch of Canon Charles Perraud's 
career. Sad it was, but his soul, free of bitter- 
ness, preserved the supernatural hope. He has 



CONCLUSION 99 

given a resume of his earthly deceptions on the 
lines which seem to embody his career as a 
preacher. 1 

One day, at the opening up of youth, without 
hesitating, say I, rather with the most confident 
enthusiasm, are sacrificed all the happiness and all 
earthly hope to preach the Gospel in order to con- 
vert and save souls. Neither upon his power nor 
upon his personal eloquence depends the new and 
eloquent apostle, but upon the divine winsomeness 
of Christ's doctrine; upon the supernatural charm 
of His promises; upon the ravishing light of His 
revelations. 

Does not the Gospel embrace all truth, all power, 
all hope, all solace? Is it not the secret of earthly 
progress and prosperity at the same time that it 
opens to us the sight of heaven and helps us to 
ascend toward God? 

With also what a charming mixture of hardihood 
and fear of precocious gravity and youthful art- 
lessness the preacher makes his bow before the as- 
sembled faithful. What matters his lack of 
experience and his weakness; he will have only to 
hold up the Gospel wide open and say, Behold how 
divinely lovely is Christ, and all the world will be 
won. 

But behold, his church is half empty, while among 
those who come to hear him the greater part listen 
but listlessly to his preaching. 

Finally, in spite of all efforts, the poor zealous 

i " Meditations sur les sept paroles " : Fifth Meditation, 
on the words, I thirst. Pp. 147-149. 



100 A MARRIED PRIE&T 

shepherd of souls perceives that the Faith has not 
grown in his parish, that morals are not bettered, 
and that in the greater number of souls entrusted to 
him God holds a much smaller place than vanity, 
pleasure and money. 

Broaden out the horizon, and the famous bishop 
or renowned preacher will admit that they have lit- 
tle else than sorrows and disillusions. 

Then to these apostolic souls, blasted in their 
noblest hopes, thwarted in their noblest efforts, what 
temptation to despair, what manner of sorrowful 
amazement, what longing desire, of which God alone 
is the witness and which God only will reward. 



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One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





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